
Book _„ V-li 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




JOHN H. WALLACE. 



0..:... 



THE 



Horse of America 



IN HIS 



Derivation, History, and Development. 



TRACING HIS ANCESTORS, BY THE AID OF .MUCH NEWLY DISCOVERED DATA, 

THROUGH ALL THE AGES FROM THE FIRST DAWNINGS 

OF HISTORY TO THE PRESENT DAY. 

INCLUDING THE HORSES OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD, HITHERTO UNEXPLORED, 

GIVING THEIR HISTORY, SIZE, GAITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 

IN EACH OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES. 

SHOWING HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED, TOGETHER WITH A HISTORY 

OF THE PUBLICATIONS THROUGH WHICH THE BREED 

OF TROTTERS WAS ESTABLISHED. 



WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



BY/' 

JOHN H. VaLLACE, 

Founder of " Wallace's American Trotting Register," " Wallace's Monthly, 
"Wallace's Tear Book," etc. 




NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR. ^WO COPIES RECEIVED 

1897. ^^,. 



Entered according to act of Congress, by 

JOHN H. WALLACE, 

in the year 1897, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



The study of the Horse, from' the first glimmerings of history, 

Bacred and profane, and tracing him from his original home through 

migrations until all the peoples of the globe had received their 

cial supply, may not be a new idea, but it is certainly a new 

.idertaking. Horse Books without number have been written, 

nostly in the century just closing, but in the history of the horse 

hey are all alike — merely reproductions of what had been printed 

before. So far as my knowledge goes, therefore, this volume is the 

first attempt, in any language, to determine the original habitat of 

the horse and to trace him, historically, in his distribution. 

The facts presented touching the introduction of the horse into 
Egypt, and two thousand years later into Arabia, as well as the 
plebeian blood from which the English race horse has derived his 
great speed, will be a shock to the nerves of the romanticists of the 
•old world as well as the new. Taking the facts of history and 
well-known experiences together, my readers can determine for 
themselves whether the claims for the superiority of Arabian blood 
is not pure fiction. For my own part I cannot recognize any blood 
in all horsedom as ''royal blood" except that which is found in 
the veins of the horse that " has gone out and done it," either 
himself or in his progeny. 

In our own country there has always remained a blank in horse 
history that nobody has attempted to supply. This blank embraced 
a century of racing of which we of the present generation have 
been entirely ignorant. Believing that a correct knowledge of the 
horse of the Colonial period, in his size, gait, qualities and capaci- 
ties was absolutely essential to an intelligent comprehension of the 



iv PREFACE. 

phenomena presented on our trotting and running courses of the 
present day, I liave not hesitated to bestow on this new feature of 
the work great labor and research. In this I have felt a special 
satisfaction in the fact that while the field is old in dates, tliis is 
the first time it has ever been traversed and considered. 

In the chapters which follow, many historical questions • are 
treated at such length as their relative importance seems to demand, 
embracing the different families that have contributed to the build- 
ing up of the breed of trotters; and the question of how the trot- 
ting horse is bred is carefully considered in the light of all past 
experiences and brought down to the close of 1896. These chap- 
ters will not surprise the old readers of the Wallace's Monthly, for 
they will here meet with many thoughts that will not be new to 
them, but they will find them more fully elaborated, in more 
orderly form, and brought down to the latest experiences. 

It is not the purpose of this book to furnish statistical tables 
covering the great mass of trotting experiences, nor to consider the 
mysteries of the trainer's art that have been so ably discussed by ex- 
perienced and skillful men. But the real and only purpose is to 
place upon record the results of years devoted to historical research, 
at home and abroad; to dispel the illusions and humbugs that have 
clustered about the horse for many centuries; and to consider with 
some minuteness, which of necessity cannot be impersonal, the 
great industrial revolution that has been wrought in horse-breed- 
ing, and all growing out of a little unpretentious treatise written 
twenty-five years ago. which contained nothing more striking than 
a little bit of science and a little bit of sense intelligently com- 
mingled. The battle between the principles of this treatise and 
selfish prejudices and mental sterility, was long and bitter, but the 
truth prevailed, and in the production of the Driving Horse the 
teachings of that little paper have placed our country first among 
all the nations of the earth. 

JOHN H. WALLACE. 

New York: 40 West 9:5d Street. 
September 1, 1S97 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTROD aCT ION. 

PAGES 

General View of the Field Traversed 1_23 

CHAPTER n. 

ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 

No' indications tbat tlie liorse was originally wild — The steppes of High Asia 
and Arabia not tenable as his original home — Color not sufBcient evi- 
dence — Impossibility of horses existing in Arabia in a wild state — Xo 
horses in Arabia until 356 a.d. — Large forces of Armenian, Median 
and Cappadocian cavalry employed more than one thousand seven 
hundred years B.C. — A breed of white race horses — Special adaptability 
of tbe Armenian country to the horse — Armenia a horse-exporting 
country before the Prophet Ezekiel — Devotion of the Armenian people 
to agricultural and pastoral pursuits through a period of four thousand 
years — All the evidences point to ancient Armenia as the center from 
which the horse was distributed 24-35 

CHAPTER HI. 

E.A.RLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 

First evidences of horses in Egypt about 1700 B.C. — Supported by Egyp- 
tian records and history — The Patriarch Job had no horses — Solo- 
mon's great cavalry force organized — Arabia as described by Strabo at 
the beginning of our era — No horses then in Arabia — Constantius sends 
two hundred Cappadocian horses into Arabia a.d. 356 — Arabia the last 
country to be supplied with horses — The ancient Phoenician merchants 
and their colonies — Hannibal's cavalry forces in the Punic Wars — 
Distant ramifications of Phoenician trade and colonization — Commerce 
reached as far as Britain and the Baltic — Probable source of Britain's 
earliest horses 36-50 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ARABIAN HORSE. 

The Arabian, the horse of romance — The horse naturally foreign to Arabia 
— Superiority of the camel for all Arabian needs — Scarcity of horses in 
Arabia in Mohammed's time — Various preposterous traditions of Arab 
horsemanship — The Prophet's mythical mares — Mohammed not in any 
sense a horseman — Early English Arabians — the Markham Arabian 
— The alleged Royal Mares — The Darley Arabian — The Godolphin 
Arabian — The Prince of Wales' Arabian race horses — Mr. Blunt's pil- 
grimage to the Euphrates — His purchases of so-called Arabians — Deyr 



Vi CONTENTS. 

PAOEff 

as a great liorse market where everything is thoroughbred — Failure of 
Mr. Blunt's experiments — Various Arabian horses brought to America 
— Horses sent to our Presidents — Disastrous experiments of A. Keene 
Richards — Tendency of Arab romancing from Ben Hur 51-66 

CHAPTER V. 

THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 

The real origin of the English race horse In confusion — Full list of the 
" foundation stock" as given by Mr. Weatherby one hundred years ago 
— The list complete and embraces all of any note — Admiral Rous' ex- 
travaganza — Godoiphin Arabian's origin wholly unknown — Hishistory 
— Successful search for his true portrait — Stubbs' picture a caricature 
— The true portrait alone supplies all that is known of his origin and 
blood 67-78 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE (Continued). 

England supplied with horses before the Chris^tian era — Bred for different 
purposes — Markham on .he speed of early native horses— Duke of New- 
castle on Arabians — His choice of blood to propagate — Size of early 
English horses — Difficulties about pedigrees in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries — Early accumulations very trashy — The Gallo- 
ways and Irish Hobbies — Discrepancies in size — The old saddle stock 
— The pacers wiped out — Partial revision of the English Stud Book. .79-89' 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE AMERICAN RACE HORSE. 

Antiquity of American racing — First race course at Hempstead Plain, 1665 
— Racing in Virginia, 16'77 — Conditions of early races — Early so-called 
Arabian importations — The marvelous tradition of Lindsay's " Arabian" 
— English race horses first imported about 1750 — The old colonial stock 
as a basis — First American turf literature — Skinner's American Turf 
Register and Importing Magazine, 1829 — Cadwallader R. Colden's 
Sporting Magazine, short-lived but valuable — The original Spirit of 
the 7 tmes— Porter's Spirit of the Times — Wilkes' Spirit of the Times, 
1859 — Edgar's Stud Book — Wallace's Stud Book — Bruce's Stud Book 
— Their history, methods and value — Summing up results, showing 
that success has followed breeding to individuals and families that 
could run and not to individuals and families that could not run, what- 
ever their blood 90-107 

CHAPTER VHI. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — VIRGINIA, 

Hardships of the colonists — First importations of horses — Racing prevalent 
in the seventeenth century — Exportations and then importations pro- 
hibited — Organized horse racing commenced 1677 and became very 
general — In 1704 there were many wild horses in Virginia and they 
were bunted as game — The Chincoteague ponies accounted for — Jones 
on life in Virginia, 1730 — Fast early pacers, Galloways and Irish 
Hobbies — English race horses imported — Moreton's Traveler probably 
the first — Quarter racing prevailed on the Carolina border — Average 



CONTENTS. yil 

PAGES 

size and habits of action clearly established — The native pacer thrown 
in the shade by the imported runner — An Englishman's prej- 
udices 108-119 

CHAPTER IX. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW YORK. 

Settlement of New Amsterdam — Horses from Curagoa — Prices of Dutch 
and English horses — Van der Donck's description and size of horses — 
Horses to be branded — Stallions under fourteen hands not to run at 
large — Esopus horse — Surrender to the English, 1664 — First organ- 
ized racing — Dutch horses capable of improvement in speed — First 
advertised Subscription Plate — First restriction, contestants must "be 
bred in America" — Great racing and heavy betting — First importations 
of English running horses — Half-breds to the front — True foun- 
dation of American pedigrees — Half -bushel of dollars on .a side — 
Resolutions of the Continental Congress against racing — Withdrawal 
of Mr. James De Lancey — Pacing and trotting contests everywhere — 
Rip Van Dam's horse and his cost 120-127 

CHAPTER X. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW ENGLAND. 

First importations to Boston and to Salem — Importations from Holland 
brought high prices — They were not pacers and not over fourteen 
hands — In 1640 horses were exported to the West Indies — First Ameri- 
can newspaper and first horse advertisement — Average sizes — The 
different gaits — CONNECTICUT, first plantation, 1636— Post horses 
provided for by law — All horses branded — Sizes and Gaits — An Eng- 
lishman's experience with pacers — Lindsay's Arabian — Rhode Island, 
Founded by Roger Williams, 1636 — No direct importations ever made 
— Horses largely exported to other colonies 1690 — Possibly some to 
Canada — Pacing races a common amusement — Prohibited, 1749 — Size 
of the Narragansetts compared with the Virginians 128-134 

CHAPTER XI. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY, MARYLAND, CARO- 
LINA. 

Penn's arrival in 1682 — Horse racing prohibited — Franklin's newspaper — 
Conestoga horses — Sizes and gaits — Swedish origin — Acrelius' state- 
ment — New Jersey — Branding — Increase of size — Racing, Pacing 
and Trotting restricted — Maryland — Racing and Pacing restricted 
1747 — Stallions of under size to be shot — North Carolina — First 
settler refugees — South Carolina — Size and gait in 1744 — Chal- 
lenges — No running blood in the colony, 1744 — General view 135-141 

CHAPTER XII. 

EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 

Settlement and capture of Port Royal — Early plantations — First French 
horses brought over 1665 — Possibly illicit trading — Sire of "Old 
Tippoo" — His history — " Scape Goat" and his descendants — Horses of 
the Maritime Provinces , 142-153 



Viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING EOKSE. 

PAGES 
The mechanism of the different gaits — The Elgin Marbles — Britain be- 
comes a Roman province — Pacers in the time of the Romans — Bronze 
horses of Venice — Fitz Stephen, the Monk of Canterbury — Evidence 
of the Great Seals — What Blundeville says — WbatGervaise Markham 
says — What the Duke of Newcastle says — The amble and the pace 
one and the same — At the close of Elizabeth's reign — The Galloways 
and Hobbies — Extinction of the pacer — The original pacer probably 
from the North — Polydore Virgil's evidence — Samuel Purchas' evi- 
dence — The process of wiping out the pacer — King James set the 
fashion — All foreign horses called " Arabians" — The foreigners larger 
and handsomer — Good roads and wheeled vehicles dispensed with the 
pacer — Result of prompting Mr. Euren — Mr. Youatt's blunder — Other 
English gentlemen not convinced there ever were any pacers 154-171 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE AMERICAN PACER AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE AMERICAN TROTTER. 

Regulations against stallions at large — American pacers taken to the West 
Indies — Narragansett pacers; many foolish and groundless theories 
about their origin — Dr. McSparran on the speed of the pacer — Mr. 
Updike's testimony — Mr. Hazard and Mr. Enoch Lewis — Exchanging 
meetings with Virginia — Watson's Annals — Matlack and Acrelius — 
Rip Van Dam's horse — Cooper's evidence — Cause of disappearance — 
Bani.shed to the frontier — First intimation that the pace and the trot 
were essentially one gait- -How it was received — Analysis of the two 
gaits — Pelham, Highland Maid, Jay-Eye-See, Blue Bull — The pacer 
forces himself into publicity — Higher rate of speed — Pacing races very 
early — Quietly and easily developed — Comes to his speed quickly — His 
present eminence not permanent — The gamblers carried him there — 
Will he return to his former obscurity ? . . 173-189 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE. 

The saddle gaits come only from the pacer — Saddle gaits cultivated three 
hundred years ago — Markham on the saddle gaits — The military seat 
the best — The unity of the pace and trot — Gaits analyzed — Saddle 
Horse Register — Saddle horse progenitors — Denmark not a thorough- 
bred horse 190-195 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE WILD HORSES OP AMERICA. 

The romances of fifty years atro — Was the horse indigenous to this country? 
— The theories of the paleontologists not satisfactory — Pedigrees of 
over two millions of years too Ion — Outlines of horses on prehistoric 
ruins, evidently modern — The linguistic test among the oldest tribes 
of Indians fails to discover any word for " Horse" — The horses aban- 
doned west of the Mississippi by the followers of De Soto about 1541 
were the progenitors of the wild horses of the plains 196-204 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XVII. 

MESSENGER A.ND HIS ANCESTORS, 

PAGES 

Messenger the greatest of all trotting progenitors — Record of pedigrees in 
English Stud Book — Pedigrees made from unreliable sources— Messen- 
ger's right male line examined — Flying Childers' "mile in a minute" 
— Blaze short of being thoroughbred — Sampson, a good race horse — 
His size; short in his breeding — Engineer short also — Mambrino was 
a race horse with at least two pacing crosses; distinguished as a 
T^rogenitor of coach horses and fast trotters — Messenger's dam cannot 
be traced nor identified — Amongall the horses claiming to be thorough- 
bred he is the only one that founded a family of trotters — This fact 
conceded by eminent writers in attempting to find others 205-221 



CHAPTER XVIII. 
HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 

Messenger's racing in England — His breeder unknown — Popular uncer- 
tainty about the circumstances and date of his importation — The mat- 
ter settled by his first advertisement — Uncertainty as to his importer 
— Description of Messenger by David W. Jones, of Long Island — Care- 
ful consensus of descriptions by many who had seen Messenger — His 
great and lasting popularity as a stock horse — Places and prices of his 
services for twenty years — Death and burial 222-231 



CHAPTER XIX. 

messenger's SONS. 

Bambletonian (Bishop's) pedigree not beyond doubt — Cadwallader R. 
Colden's review of it — Ran successfully — Taken to Granville, N. Y. — 
Some of his descendants — Mambrino, large and coarse in appearance — 
Failure as a runner — Good natural trotter — His most famous sons 
were Abdallah, Almack, and Mambrino Paymaster — Winthrop or 
Maine Messenger and his pedigree and history — Engineer and the 
tricks of his owners — Certainly a son of Messenger — Commander — 
Bush Messenger, pedigree and descripion — Noted as the sire of coach 
horses and trotters — Potomac — Tippoo Saib — Sir Solomon — Ogden 
Messenger, dam thoroughbred — Mambrino (Grey) — Black Messenger — 
Whynot, Saratoga, Nestor, Delight — Mount Holly, Plato, Dover Mes- 
senger, Coriander, Fagdown, Bright Pboebus, Slasher, Shaftsbury, 
Hotspur, Hutchinson Messenger and Cooper's Messenger — Abuse of 
the name " Messenger." 233-254 



CHAPTER XX. 

messenger's DESCENDANTS. 

History of Abdallah— Characteristics of his dam, Amazonia — Speculations 
as to her blood — Description of Abdallah — Almack, progenitor of the 
Champion line — Mambrino Paymaster, sire of Mamljrino Chief — His- 
tory and pedigree — Mambrino Messenger — Harris' Hambletonian — 
Judson's Hambletonian — Andrus' Hambletonian, sire of the famous 
Princess, Happy Medium's dam 255-266 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

PAGES 

The greatest progenitor in Horse History — Mr. Kellogg's description, and 
comments thereupon — An analysis of Hambletonian, structurally con- 
sidered — His carriage and action — As a three-year-old trotter — Details 
of his stud ser%-ice — Statistics of the Hambletonian family — History 
and ancestry of his dam, the Charles Kent Mare — Her grstodson. 
Green's Bashaw, and his dam 267-283 

CHAPTER XXn. 

hambletokian's sons and grandsons. 

Different opinions as to relative merits of Hambletonian's greater sons — 
George Wilkes, his history and pedigree — His performing descend- 
ants — History and description of Electioneer — His family — Alexander's 
Abdallah and his two greatest sons, Almont and Belmont — Dictator — 
Harold — Happy Medium and his dam — Jay Gould — Strathmore — 
Egbert — Aberdeen — Masterlode— Sweepstakes — Governor Sprague, 
grandson of Hambletonian 284-314 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

MAMBRINO CHIEF AND HIS FAMILY. 

Description and history of Mambrino Chief — The pioneer trotting stallion 
of Kentucky — Matched against Pilot Jr. — His best sous — Mambrino 
Patchen, his opportunities and family — Woodford Mambrino, a notable 
trotter and sire — Princeps — Mambrino Pilot — Clark Chief — Fisk's 
Mambrino Chief Jr. — Ericsson 315-320 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 

The imported Barb, Grand Bashaw — Young Bashaw, an inferior individual 
— His greatest son, Andrew Jackson — His dam a trotter and pacer — 
His history — His noted son, Kemble Jackson — Long Island Black 
Hawk — Henry Clay, founder of the Clay family — Cassius M. Clay — 
The various horses named Cassius M. Clay — George M. Patchen — His 
great turf career — George M. Patchen Jr. —Harry Clay — The Moor, 
and his son Sultan's family 321-33T 

CHAPTER XXV. 

AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AND NORMAN FAMILIES. 

Seely's American Star — His fictitous pedigree — Breeding really unknown 
— A trotter of some merit — His stud career — His daughters noted 
brood mares — Conklin's American Star — Old Pacing Pilot — History and 
probable origin — Pilot Jr. — Pedigree — Training and races — Prepotency 
— Family statistics summarized — Grinnell's Champion, son of Almack 
— His sons and performing descendants — Alexander's Norman and his 
sire, the Morse Horse — Swigert and Blackwood 338-351 



CONTENTS. XL 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE BLrE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES. 

PAGES 

Blue Bull, the once leading sire — His lineage and history — His family 
raniv — The Cadmus family — Pocahontas — Smuggler — Tom Rolfe — 
Young Rolfe and Nelson — The Tom Hal Family — The various Tom 
Hals — Brown Hal — TLe Kentucky Hunters — Flora Temple — Edwin 
Forrest — The Drew Horse and Lis descendants — The Hiatogas 352-365' 

CHAPTER XXVH. 

THE BLACK HAWK, OR MORGAN FAMILY. 

Characteristics of the Morgans — History of the original Morgan — The 
fabled pedigree — The true Briton theory — Justin Morgan's breeding 
hopelessly unknown — Sherman Morgan — Black Hawk — His disputed 
piiterniiy — His dam called a Xarragansett — Ethan Allen — His great 
beauty, speed, and popularity — The Flying Morgan claim baseless — 
His dam of unknown blood — His great race with Dexter — Daniel 
Lambert, the only successful sire of the Black Hawk line 366-38&' 

CHAPTER XXVin. 

THE ORLOFF TROTTER, BELLFODNDER AND THE ENGLISH HACKNEY. 

Orloffs, the only foreign trotters of merit — Count Alexis Orloff, founder of 
the breed — Origin of the Orloff — Count Orloff began breeding in 1770 
— Smetanka, Polkan, and Polkan's son, Barss, really the first Orloff 
trotting sire — The Russian pacers — Their great speed — Imported Bell- 
founder — His history and characteristics — Got little speed — His 
descendants — The English Hackney — Not a breed, but a mere type — 
The old Norfolk trotters — Hackney experiments in America — Supe- 
riority of the trotting-bred horse demonstrated in show ring con- 
tests 390-408 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 

Tendency to misrepresentation — The Bald Galloway and Darley Arabian — 
Godolphin Arabian — Early experiences with trotting pedigrees — Mr. 
Backman's honest methods — Shanghai Mary — Capt. Rynders and 
Widow Machree — Woodburn Farm and its pedigree methods — Victim- 
ized by " horse sharps" and pedigree makers — Alleged pedigree of 
Pilot Jr. conclusively overthrown — Pedigrees of Edwin Forrest, 
Norman, Bay Chief and Black Rose — Maud S. pedigree exhaustively 
considered — Captain John W. Russell never owned the mare Maria 
Russell — The deadly parallel columns settle it 409^431 

CHAPTER XXX. 

INVESTIGATION OP DISPUTED PEDIGREES (Continued). 

How Belle of Wabash got her pedigree — Specimen of pedigree making in 
that day and locality — Search for the dam of Thomas Jefferson — True 
origin and history of Belle of Wabash — Facts about the old-time 
gelding Prince — The truth about Waxy, the grandam of Sunol — 
Remarkable attempts to make a pedigree out of nothing — How "Jim"" 



xii CONTENTS. 

PAGES 

EofE worked a "tenderfoot" — Pedigree of American Eclipse — Pedigree 
of Boston — Tom Bowling and Aaron Pennington — Clienery's Grey 
Eagle — Pedigree of George Wilkes in doubt 433-455 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED, 

Early trotting t-nd pacing races — Strains of blood in the first known trot- 
ters — The lesson of Maud S. — The genesis of trotting horse literature 
— The simple study of inheritance — The different forms of heredity — 
The famous quagga story not sustained — Illustrations in dogs — Hered- 
ity of acquired characters and instincts — Development of successive 
generations necessary — Unequaled collections of statistics — Acquired 
injuries and unsoundness transmitted 456-479 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (Continued). 

Trotting speed first supposed to be an accident — Then, that it came from 
the runner — William Wheelan's views— Test of powers of endurance 
— The term " thoroughbred" much abused — Definition of "thorough- 
bred" — How trotters may be made " thoroughly bred" — How to study 
pedigrees — Reward offered for the production of a thoroughbred horse 
that was a natural pacer — The trotter more lasting than the runner — 
The dam of Palo Alto — Arion as a two-year-old — Only three stallions 
have been able to get trotters from running-bred mares — " Structural 
incongruity" — The pacer and trotter inseparable — How to save the trot 
and reduce the ratio of pacers— Development a necessity — Table prov- 
ing this proposition — The "tin cup" policy a failure — Woodburn at 
the wrong end of the procession 480-507 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (Continued). 

Breeding the trotter intelligently an industry of modern development — 
Plethora of turf papers, and their timidity of the truth — The accepted 
theories, old and new — Failure of the "thoroughbred blood in the 
trotter" idea — "Thoroughbred foundations," and the Register — 
" Like begets like," the great central truth— Long-continued efforts 
to breed trotters from runners — New York the original source of 
supply of trotting blood to all the States— Kentucky's beginning in 
breeding trotters — R. A. Alexander, and the founding of Woodburn 
— The " infallibility " of Woodburn pedigrees — Refusal to enter fic- 
titious crosses in the Register and the results — The genesis and 
history of the standard — Its objects, effects, and influence — Establish- 
ing the breed of trotters — The Kentucky or "Pinafore" standard — 
Its purposes analyzed — The "Breeders' Trotting Stud Book" and 
how it was compiled — Failure and collapse of the Kentucky project 
— Another unsuccessful attempt to capture the Regrister — How 
honest administration of the Register made enemies — The National 
Breeders' Association and the Chicago Convention — Detailed history of 
the sale and transfer of the Register, the events that led up to it, 
and the results — Personal satisfaction and benefits from the transfer, 
and the years of rest and congenial study in preparing this book — 
The end 508-546 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

APPENDIX. 
HISTORY OP THE WALLACE PUBLICATIONS. 

By a Friend of the Author. 

PAOES 

Mr. Wallace's early life and education — Removal to Iowa, 1845 — Secretary 
Iowa State Board of Agriculture — Begins work, 1856, on " Wallace's 
American Stud Book," published 1867 — Method of gathering pedigrees 
— Trotting Supplement — Abandons Stud Book, 1870, and devotes ex- 
clusive attention to trotting literature — "American Trotting Reg- 
ister," Vol. I., published in 1871— Vol. II. follows in 1874— The 
valuable essay on breeding the forerunner of pre.sent ideas — Standard 
adopted 1879 — Its history — Battles for control of the "Register" — 
Wallace's Monthly founded 1875 — Its character, purposes, history, 
writers, and artists — "Wallace's Year Book" founded 1885 — Great 
popularity and value — Transfer of the Wallace publications, and their 
degeneration 547-559 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Portrait op the Author Frontispiece. 

Map of Armenia, Cappadocia, Syria, etc To face page 24 

Map of Pucenician Colonies and the Mediterranean. . . " " 36 

GoDOLPHiN Arabian, True Portrait^ 

>■ In one view " " 67 

OoDOLPHiN Arabian, Distorted ) 

Star Pointer, THE Champion Pacer. (1:59J) " " 155 

John R. Gentry, Pacer. (2:00^) " " 173 

Alix, THE Present Champion Trotter. (2:03^) " " 255 

Hambletonian (Rysdyk's) " " 267 

George Wilkes, Son of Hambletonian '• " 284 

Electioneer, Son of Hambletonian " " 289 

Abdallah (Alexander's). Son OF Hambletonian " " 294 

Nancy Hanks, BY Happy Medium. (2:04) " " 306 

Ethan Allen, by Vermont Black Hawk " " 381 



Note.— Nine of the above engravings have been reproduced, by permission, from the 
Portfolio issued by The Horse Review. 



THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 
General View of the Field Traversed. 

In undertaking to fulfill a promise made years ago, to write a 
history of the American Trotting Horse and his ancestors, I am 
met with the inquiry: What were his ancestors and whence did 
they come? To say that the American Trotter, the phenomenal 
horse of this century, is descended from a certain horse imported 
from England in 1788, does not fully meet the requirements of 
the truth, for there are other and very distinctive elements 
embodied in his inheritance that are not indebted to that partic- 
ular imported horse. In searching for these undefined elements, 
I have found myself in the fields of antiquity, reaching out step 
by step, further and further, until the utmost boundaries of all 
history, sacred and profane, were clearly in view. There I found 
a field that was especially attractive because it was a new field, 
and the relations of the peoples of the earliest ages to their horses 
had never been investigated nor discussed. Having no engage- 
ments nor necessities to hurry me, the careful exploration of this 
hitherto unknown territory has afforded me very great enjoy- 
ment. 

As the result of these investigations, the breadth and scope of 
this volume will be greatly widened, touching upon the originals 
of most of the lighter types of horses, and many of the idols of 
the imagination will be demolished. The objective point is the 
history of the Trotting Horse, but before reaching that point we 
must consider the beginnings of, practically, nearly all the vari- 
eties of horses in the world. The assistance that I may be able 
to gain from modern writers will be very limited, and restricted 



2 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

to a few citations. Many Englishmen have written books on the 
horse, mostly horse doctors, who have been very learned in veter- 
inary matters, but wholly unlearned in the history of the horses 
of their own country. The editor of the "Hackney Stud Book" 
was the first Englishman to make known to his readers that the 
most popular horse in all England for many centuries was the 
despised little pacer, and this historical fact he first learned from 
this side of the water. Most of the English books on the horse 
are practically reprints of what somebody said before, and given 
without credit. In some of them nothing is changed but the 
title page and, possibly, the name of the author. An examina- 
tion of the leading magazines of our own country discloses the 
fact that an astonishing number of gentlemen have been afflicted 
with an itch for writing on the horse, without ever having given 
the honest study of an hour to the subject. This is the kind of 
"literature of the horse" with which the whole English-speaking 
people have been long afflicted. 

To go back to the fountain head and consider in what country 
and among what people the horse was indigenous, or, in other 
words, to seek to determine his original habitat, may strike some 
of my readers as going too far away to either interest or instruct 
them. But in the very center of all popular horse knowledge 
will be found a vital error that has dominated, to a large extent, 
the whole horse history of the past three hundred years. If you 
ask a dozen horsemen of average intelligence. What country was 
the original habitat of the horse? a majority of them will an- 
SAver, Arabia. If you put the same question to the same number 
of writers on the horse, every one of them will answer, Arabia. 
As this question is more fully considered in the second chapter 
of this work, I will here pass it over by giving a few dates. 
Armenia, Media, Cappadocia, and indeed all the countries border- 
ing on the Black and Caspian Seas, were abundantly supplied 
with horses at least eighteen hundred years before the Christian 
era. At this time Egypt had no horses, but about one hundred 
years later, as shoAvn by the history of Joseph and the inscrip- 
tions on her monuments, she had received a supply. At the 
very beginning of the Christian era, Strabo, the Greek geographer 
and historian, informs us Arabia had no horses. In the year 
356 A.D. the Emperor Constantius sent to the prince of the coun- 
try now called Yemen, in Arabia Felix, two hundred "well-bred 
Cappadocian horses" as a present. This is the first introduction 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 6 

of the horse into Arabia, so far as we have any tracings or indica- 
tions of history, and thus the error of more than two thousand 
years is exposed. 

Many of the more conservative and thoughtful writers have 
maintained that the original habitat of the horse was on the 
steppes of Asia, but I have never been able to discover any rea- 
sonable basis for such an hypothesis. It seems to rest chiefly on 
two conditions, viz., that there were vast multitudes of horses 
running wild on the steppes; and, second, that the Barbarians 
brought their horses with them when they overran Europe; 
hence, as they argue, the horse must have been indigenous in 
that region. The first of these ideas will not hold without some 
shadow of proof, for it is overthrown by our own experience on 
our own continent; and^as to the second, the whole of Southern 
Europe, including Britain, and the whole of Northern Africa, 
were amply supplied with horses many centuries before the 
hordes from Asia made their appearance. Besides all this, there 
is no evidence, either in reason or history, that there ever was a 
period when the horse was not the companion, friend, and servant 
of man. 

The several facts, conditions, and circumstances pointing to 
Armenia as the original home of the horse, and which are consid- 
ered in the next chapter, have afforded me a succession of most 
agreeable surprises in their approximate completeness. The 
salubrity of the climate, the varied and abundant productions of 
the soil, and the ten thousand streams of pure water flowing from 
the mountains furnished a home and a breeding place just 
suited to the best of all animal creation, whether man or beast. 
To this fitness of the environment we can add the historical fact 
that more than eighteen hundred years before the Christian era 
horses abounded there in great numbers and of most excellent 
quality. To this we may add the other fact, that this is the first 
instance in all history, sacred or profane, so far as we have dis- 
covered, in which horses are so spoken of. The Armenians are 
the oldest people on the face of the earth, inhabiting the same 
territory in which they grew into a nation. They are the direct 
descendants of Japheth, the son of ISToah, and they spread out 
from their original home, at the foot of the mountains of Ararat. 
They grew into a mighty nation, and at one time their dominion 
extended from the Mediterranean to the Caspian. The su- 
premacy of the tribal relation ,vas maintained until Haic or 



4 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Haicus, the great grandson of Japlieth, became the ruler of his 
people. Descending from him, in the direct male line, there 
were five or six long reigns before the dynasty was overthrown 
by the Assyrians. They were largely an agricultural people, and 
the ancient historians have told us they were famous for the 
great numbers and fine quality of the horses they produced. The 
market for their horses, the prophet Ezekiel tells us, was in the 
great commercial city of Tyre, whence they were carried ''in the 
ships of Tarshish" by the Phoenician merchants to all portions of 
the known world. Having here reached back to the N^oachic 
period and country, with all that this implies, I will leave the 
problem, with the more extended consideration that will be 
given it in the chapter on the general distribution of horses in all 
parts of the commercial world. 

Horsemen of average intelligence and writers on the horse, 
oftentimes much below average intelligence in horse matters, all 
seem to unite on the Arabian horse as their fetish, when in fact 
they know nothing about him. The songs of the poets and the 
stories of the novelists have taken the place, in the minds of the 
people of all nations, of solid history and sober experience. When 
a story writer wishes to depict an athletic and daring hero, he 
never fails to mount him upon an "Arab steed," when some 
blood-curdling adventures are to be disclosed. When Admiral 
Eons, the great racing authority in England, anjiounced some 
years ago, that the Euglish race horse was purely descended from 
the horses of Arabia Deserta, without one drop of plebeian 
blood, all England believed him, and this rash and groundless 
dictum has served all writers as conclusive evidence ever since. 
Now, it is not probable that more than two or at most three per 
cent, of the blood of the English race horse as he stands to-day is 
Arabian blood. The greatness and value of the Arabian horse is 
purely mythical. He has been tested hundreds of times, both on 
the course and in the stud, and in every single instance he has 
proved a failure. This is what all history and experience teach. 
There are biit few horses bred in Arabia and there are, compara- 
tively, but few there now. From the time of their first intro- 
duction into Yemen — Arabia Felix — up to the time of Mohammed, 
about two hundred and seventy years, they were still very scarce. 
Mohammed was not a horseman nor a horse breeder, nor is it known 
that he ever mounted a horse but once, and then he had but two 
in his army. When he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca he rode 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 5 

■a camel; and when he went the second time in triumph, mounted 
on a camel, he made the requisite number of circuits round the 
holy place, then dismounted and broke the idols that had been 
set up there. Then came the triumphant shout of his followers; 
"There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet." 
Since then, this cry has rung over a thousand battlefields, and 
as I write it is still heard in the homes of the slaughtered Arme- 
nians. From a great, warlike, and conquering people, the fol- 
lowers of Mohammed have degenerated into an aggregation of 
robbers and murderers of defenseless Christians. Since the days 
of Mohammed, horses no doubt have increased in numbers, but 
all modern travelers express their surprise at the small numbers 
they see. The horse is an expensive luxury in Arabia, and none 
but the rich can afford to keep him. He fills no economic place 
in the domestic life of the Arab, for he is never used for any pur- 
pose except display and robbery. Nobody is able to own a horse 
but the sheiks and a few wealthy men. Nobody would think of 
mounting a horse for a journey, be it long or short. The camel 
fills the place of the horse, the cow and a flock of sheep, all in 
one, and surely the Arabs are right in saying, "Job's beast is a 
monument of God's mercy." It is very evident that nearly all 
the horses said to have been brought from Arabia never saw 
Arabia. As an illustration of the uncertainty of what a man is 
getting when he thinks he is buying an Arabian, in the Orient, I 
will give, in some detail the experiences of Mr. Wilfrid S. 
Blunt, a wealthy Englishman who had an ambition to regenerate 
tlie English race horse by bringing in fresh infusions of Arabian 
blood. He went to Arabia to buy the best, but he didn't go into 
Arabia to find it. He skirted along through the border land 
where agriculture and civilization prevailed, while away off to the 
south the wild tribes roamed over the desert, and to the north, 
not far away, was the land of abundance that had been famous 
for more than three thousand years for the great numbers and 
excellence of the horses bred there. Here on the banks of the 
Euphrates Mr. Blunt found the town of Deyr, and he soon dis- 
covered it was a famous horse market. The inhabitants were the 
only people he met with who seemed to understand and appre- 
ciate the value of pedigrees, and there were no horses in the town 
l3ut "thoroughbreds." Here Mr. Blunt made nearly all his pur- 
chases which amounted to eighteen mares and two stallions "at 
reasonable prices. " As will be seen in the extracts from his book. 



6 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

he was strikingly solicitous that the friends at home should have 
no doubt about the quality of the stock he purchased being all 
"thoroughbred." ISIo doubt he realized the awkwardness of the 
location as not the right one in which to secure "thoroughbred" 
Arabians and hence the vigorous indorsement of the honesty of 
the "slick and experienced" dealers as honest men and true de- 
scendants of the Bedouins of the desert. In this "he dt)th 
protest too much" and thus suggests that while the pedigrees 
came from the tribes of the desert to the South, it might be pos- 
sible that the horses came from the farmers who bred them to the 
North. However this may have been, the whole enterprise 
turned out to be a flat failure, and after a number of years spent 
in begging for popular support, the whole collection was dispersed 
under the hammer of the auctioneer, not realizing a tithing of 
the cost. 

While it is not necessary that I should express any opinion as 
to whether Mr. Blunt Avas deceived in the breeding of the animals 
which he brought home, I will make brief allusion to an Amer- 
ican experience which is more fully considered elsewhere. Some 
forty or more years ago Mr. A. Keene Eichards, a breeder of race 
horses in Kentucky, became impressed with the idea that the way 
to improve the race horse of America was to introduce direct in- 
fusions of the blood of Arabia. He did not hesitate, but he 
started to Arabia and brought home some horses and mares and 
put them to breeding. The pure bloods could not run at all and 
the half-breeds were too slow to make the semblance of a contest 
with Kentucky-bred colts. He concluded that he had been 
cheated by the rascally Arabs in the blood they put upon him. 
He then determined to go back and get the right blood, and as a 
counselor he took with him the famous horse painter, Troye, 
who was thoroughly up on anatomy and structure. They went 
into the very heart of Arabia and spent many weeks among the 
different tribes of the desert. They had greatly the advantage of 
Mr. Blunt or any other amateur, for they were experienced horse- 
men and knew just what they were doing. When they were 
ready to start home they believed they had found and secured 
the very best horses that Arabia had produced. When the 
produce of this second importation were old enough to run it was 
found that they were no better than the first lot, and thus all the 
bright dreams of enthusiasm were dissipated. Thus was demon- 
strated for the thousandth time that the blood of even the best 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 7 

and purest Arabian horse is a detriment and hindrance rather 
than a benefit to the modern race horse. Mr. Kichards, with all 
his practical knowledge and experience, was no more successful 
than the amateur, Mr. Blunt. The blood which Mr. Richards 
brought home was, no doubt, purer and more fashionable, as esti- 
mated in the desert, than that brought home by Mr. Blunt, but 
when tested by modern advancement it was no better. 

A careful study of the chapter on the English Race Horse will 
present to the minds of all my intelligent readers the considera- 
tion of several points to which they will be slow in yielding 
assent. These points run up squarely against the preconceived 
opinions and prejudices of two centuries, and these preconceived 
opinions and prejudices are well-nigh universal. The first point 
upon which the public intelligence has gone wrong is in the 
general belief that horse-racing had its origin in the seven- 
teenth century, when Charles II. was restored to his throne. 
The truth is we have accounts of racing by contemporaneous his- 
torians in the twelfth century, and indeed, we might say from the 
time of the Romans in Britain. To go back four centuries, how- 
ever, is far enough to answer our present purpose. After select- 
ing, breeding, and racing four hundred years we must conclude 
that the English had some pretty good race horses. This is 
fully verified by the writers at the close of Queen Elizabeth's 
reign as well as at the beginning of Charles II. 's. They had native 
English horses that were able to beat all the imported exotics, in- 
cluding the Arabian owned by King James. We must, therefore, 
conclude that the race horse was not created by Charles II., but 
that racing was simply revived by him, after the restrictions of 
Crcmwell's time, and that the old English blood was the basis of 
that revival. The importations of so many exotics in his reign 
were simply so many reinforcements of the old English racing 
blood. 

The next point to which exception will be taken is the con- 
clusion reached as to the character and influence of the exotics 
that were introduced in the reign of Charles II. These exotics 
have been designated in a general way, by the phrase "foundation 
stock," which has been introduced more out of deference to 
the popular understanding than to its legitimate and true 
meaning. For the real "foundation stock" we must look away 
back in the centuries, long before Charles was born. The 
analysis of the data furnished by Mr. AVeatherby as "foun- 



8 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

dation stock" clearly shows that the Turks predominated in 
numbers, but, possibly, the Barbs in influence. The Arabian 
element, in both numbers and influence, seems to be practically 
Qiil, and this is the "gist of my offendiug." The one great horse 
— Godolphin Arabian — exerted a greater and more lasting influ- 
ence upon the English race horse than any other of his century 
and probably than all the others of his century, and his blood 'is 
wholly unknown. Fortunately, a few years ago I was able to 
unearth his portrait and prove it a true portrait, and in that 
picture we must look for his lineage. He was a horse of great 
substance and strength on short legs, with no resemblance what- 
ever to a race horse. About fifty years after his death Mr. 
Stubbs, the artist, who prided himself upon representing the 
character of a horse rather than his shape, came across this 
picture, from which he made an "ideal" copy of what he thought 
the horse should have been, which is a veritable monstrosity. 
These two pictures will appear together in their proper places, 
where they can be leisurely studied, and the honest and the dis- 
honest compared. 

The American race horse is the lineal descendent of the English 
race horse, and like his ancestor he is very largely dependent upon 
the ''native blood" for his existence as a breed. The first 
English race horse was imported into Virginia about 1750, and 
he there met a class of saddle mares that had been selected, bred, 
trained, and raced at all distances up to four-mile heats, for nearly 
a hundred years. These mares were the real maternal founda- 
tion stock upon which the American race horse was established, 
as a breed. The phrase "native blood" is here used as applying 
to the animals and their descendants, that were brought over 
from England at and soon after the plantation of the American 
colonies. Up to the time of the Kevolution there were but few 
racing mares brought over — as many as you could count on your 
fingers — but they must have been marvelously prolific, for thirty 
or forty filly foals each would hardly have accommodated all the 
animals with pedigrees tracing to them. Quite a number of our 
greatest race horses and sires of forty or fifty years ago traced to 
some one of these mares through links that were wholly fictitious. 
Indeed, from the period of the Kevolution, and even before that, 
down to our own time, the pernicious and dishonest habit of 
adding fictitious crosses beyoTid the second or third dam became 
- the rule in the old American families, and an animal with a strictly 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 9 

honest pedigree was the exception. In spreading abroad these 
dishonest fictions as true pedigrees, the press — perhaps not 
venally, but ignorantly — was made the active agent. Whenever 
a rogue could get a pedigree into print, however absurd, nothing 
coukl prevent its spread as the truth. The early sporting and 
breeding press was not in the hands of men remarkable for con- 
science and still less remarkable for knowledge. But the worst 
of all was the "professional pedigree maker" who knew so many 
things that he never knew, and stopped at nothing. In all this 
dirty work of manufacturing pedigrees there is a very striking 
resemblance between the awkward efforts of the early English 
and the early American pedigree maker. This wliole topic of the 
ignorance of the press and the dishonesty of the pedigree makers 
will be considered fully in its proper place. Fortunately, al- 
though still far from perfect, the methods and care in the pres- 
ervation of the true lineage of the race horse in our own day 
have been greatly improved. The many efforts to improve the 
American race horse by introducing fresh infusions of Saracenic 
blood Avill receive due attention, especially as they have nearly all 
been made within the newspaper period, and their uniform and 
complete failure will not be new to American horsemen. 

"When we reach the horses of the colonial period, we are in a 
field that never has been explored and cannot be expected to yield 
a very rich harvest. Here and there I have been able to pick up 
a detached paragraph from some contemporaneous writer, and 
occasionally a record, or an advertisement, from which, in most 
cases, I have been able to construct a fair and truthful outline 
and description of the horses of the different colonies, down to 
the Revolutionary war. The collection of the material has re- 
quired great patience and great labor, but it has not been an irk- 
some task, for many things have been brought to light of great 
interest to the student of horse history. The knowledge of the 
colonial horse in his character and action, that may be gathered 
from the chapters devoted to his description and history, I flatter 
myself, will not only be interesting as something new, but will 
throw a strong light on the lineage of the two-minute trotter and 
pacer. 

The colonists of Virginia were subjected for a number of years 
to great suffering, privation, and want. They were badly selected 
and many of them were improvident and never trained to habits 
of industry and thrift. There were quite too many "penniless 



10 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

gentlemen's sons" among tliem, who had been sent out with the 
hope that the change might improve their habits and their 
morals. They were too proud to work, and when they were driven 
to it by necessity they didn't know how. After suffering untold 
hardships for a succession of years, those that survived learned 
to adapt themselves to their environment and to make their own 
way in the world. Their first supply of domestic animals w«re 
all consumed as food, embracing horses, cattle, swine, and goats, 
and everything had thus been consumed except one venerable 
female swine, as reported by a board of examiners. Their second 
supply of horses, cattle, swine, and goats was more carefully 
guarded, and from them in greater part came the countless deni- 
zens of the barnyard. 

There were several shipments of horses at different times, by 
the proprietors in London, down till about 1620 and possibly 
later, but they do not seem to have increased very rapidly, for in 
1646 all the horses in the colony were estimated at about two 
hundred of both sexes. This estimate was probably too low, for 
ten years after this the exportation of mares was forbidden by 
legislative enactment, and eleven years later this restriction was 
removed, and both sexes could then be exported. From this 
legislation and from writers who visited the colony we learn that 
horses were very plenty, and they are described as of excellent 
quality, hardy and strong, but under size. It was the custom in 
Virginia, and indeed in all the other colonies at that period and 
for long afterward, to brand their young horses and turn them 
out to hustle for their own living. They increased with wonder- 
ful rapidity and great numbers became as wild and as wary of 
the habitation and sight of man as the deer of the forest. About 
the close of the seventeenth century the chasing and capture of 
wild horses in Virginia became a legitimate and not always an 
unprofitable sport, for an animal caught without a brand became 
the unquestioned property of his captor. It is a noteworthy fact 
that off the coast of Virginia the island of Chincoteagne has 
been occupied for probably two hundred years by large bands of 
wild horses. They are still there, and not till within the last few 
decades have there been any efforts made to domesticate some 
selections from them. They are of all colors, but quite uniform 
in size, not averaging much over thirteen hands, with clean limbs, 
and many of therii are pacers. There is only one way to account 
for them in that location, and that is, that they were originally a 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 11 

band of Virginia wild horses that wandered or was chased out 
onto this sandy peninsula, and while there some great storm set 
the mysterious ocean currents at work and cut off their retreat by 
converting a peninsula into an island, and there they have lived 
and multiplied ever since. 

The colonial horses of Virginia were of all colors and all very 
small in size, as we would class them in our day. An examina- 
tion of a great many advertisements of ''Strayed," "Taken up," 
etc., of the period of about 1750, clearly establishes the fact that 
at that time the average height was a small fraction over thirteen 
hands and one inch. More were described as just thirteen hands 
than any other size, and they were nearly all between thirteen 
and fourteen. From this same advertising source I was able to 
glean conclusive evidence as to their habits of action, and found 
that just two-thirds of them were natural pacers and one-third 
natural trotters. Thus for more than a hundred years they had 
retained the peculiarities of their English ancestors in the reign 
of James I., in color, size, and gait. This in no way differs from 
the description of the Chincoteague Island ponies of to-day. As 
early as 1(J86 a law was enacted that all stallions less than thir- 
teen and a half hands high found running at large should be 
forfeited; but this, like Henry VIII. 'slaws in the same direction, 
had failed to increase the average size of the horses. From the 
indomitable passion for horse-racing which prevailed universally 
among the colonists, we may safely conclude that some animals 
were carefully selected and coupled with a view to the speed of 
the progeny, both at the gallop and at the pace, but the great 
mass were allowed to roam at large, and under such conditions 
no variety or tribe of horses has ever improved in size, or indeed 
in any other quality. 

The early horses of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, 
afterward New York, were brought from Utrecht in Holland. 
As we would look at them to-day, they were small, but they were 
larger and better, and brought higher prices than the English 
horses of the Eastern colonies or than the Swedish on the AVest. 
It was conceded, however, that for the saddle they were not so 
good as the New England horses, and hence it may be inferred 
that they Avere not pacers. It is very evident, however, that the 
two breeds were soon mixed, as the saddle was then the universal 
means of travel, whether for long or short distances. During 
the time of the Revolutionary war a large accumulation of data 



12 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

bearing on the size and action of the horses of that period goes; 
to show that the average size had then increased to fourteen 
hands and one inch, and in gait fifteen both jjaced and trotted, 
nine trotted only, and seven paced only. It is not pretended 
that these data represent the horses of the early colonial period, 
but only of the period above indicated. Strains of larger breeds, 
had been introduced, but the little New England pacer had made 
his mark on the habits of action. 

In 1G05, the next year after the Dutch had surrendered the 
country to the English, Governor Nicolls established a race-course 
on Hempstead Plains and offered prizes for the fleetest runners, 
and his successors kept up annual meetings on that course for 
many years. This was the first official and regularly organized 
race-course that we have any trace of in this country. These 
meetings seem to have been Avell supported from the very first by 
both town and country, and as the people were then jDractically 
all Dutch, it is a fair inference that the horses engaged in the 
races were Dutch horses. This was before the English race horse 
had reached the character of a breed, and a hundred years before 
the first of that breed was imported into Xew York. From this, 
beginning many tracks were constructed or improvised in and 
about the city, upon which racing at all forms and at all gaits has 
been carried on to the present day. When honestly conducted 
the sport has always been favorably received by reputable people; 
but at successive periods it has degenerated into a mere carnival 
of gambling that placed it under a ban. 

The horses of the New England colonies fill a very important 
place in the horse history of the country. This is especially true 
of a remarkable tribe of swift pacers, produced in Rhode Island 
and known throughout the whole country as the "Narragansett 
Pacers." To the description of these a special chapter will be 
devoted. The first horses imported into Xew England reached 
Boston harbor in 1629 and were sent direct from England by the 
proprietary company in London. The same year a small consign- 
ment reached Salem. The next year about sixty head were 
shipped to the plantation, but many of them were lost on the 
voyage. In 1G35 two Dutch ships landed at Salem with twenty- 
seven mares and three stallions, and were sold there at remuner- 
ative prices. Other shipments followed, no doubt, that have not 
been noted. In 1G40 the colonists seem to have been supplied 
with all the horses they needed, for that year they shipped a 



GENERAL VIEAV OF THE FIELD. 13 

■cargo of eighty head to the Barbadoes. From these importations 
into Boston and Salem, all the New England colonists received 
their supplies. The field specially gleaned to determine the size 
and gaits of the Massachusetts horses covered the years 1756-59, 
from which it appears that the average height was then fourteen 
hands and one inch; and as to gait, just three-fourths were 
pacers and one-fourth trotters. In comparing this average size 
with the Virginians of the same period we find that the Massa- 
chusetts horses were about one hand higher, which would 
indicate the influence of the early Dutch blood. Besides this 
we must make some allowance for a possible different habit of 
estimating size. 

When the plantation was made at Hartford, Connecticut, in 
1G3G, the planters brought their horses and other domestic animals 
with them. In 1G53 the General Court, at New Haven, made 
provision for keeping public saddle horses for hire, and all horses 
had to be branded. After passing over a period of more than a 
hundred and twenty years we find that in 1776 the average size 
of the Connecticut horse was thirteen hands and three inches, 
thus ranging below the other New England colonies. At that 
period it is found that the ratio of pacers and trotters was as 
fifteen pacers, or trotters and pacers, to four that trotted only. 
The very interesting experience of two English travelers, 
mounted on Connecticut pacers, in 1769, and their enthusiasm 
about their superlative qualities, will be found in its place. 

The colony of Rhode Island was planted in 1636 by Roger Will- 
iams and his followers, and eleven years later they obtained their 
charter. Their supply of horses came wholly from the colony of 
Massachusetts, and in a short time the new plantation became 
greatly distinguished for the superiority and speed of its pacers. 
From the official report of the colony for 1690, we learn that 
horses constituted their leading item of exports, and that they 
were shipping horses to all the colonies of the seaboard. At that 
early day the fame of the Narragansett pacer extended through 
all the English colonies, and probably also through the French 
plantations on the St. Lawrence. All trade with Canada was 
strictly prohibited, but in the then condition of the borders how 
could such regulation be enforced, if a Frenchman, with a bale 
of peltry, wanted to exchange it for a Narragansett? Freed 
from the Puritan restrictions of New England, of that day, the 
Rhode Islanders developed the speed of their pacers by racing 



14 THE IIOKSE OF AMERICA. 

them, and thus the hest and fastest of all New England were 
collected there. In 17G8 the average height of the Narragansetts 
was fourteen hands and one inch, which shows them to have been 
about three and a quarter inches higher than the Virginia horses 
of the same period. They Avere not all pacers, for out of thirty- 
five there were eight that did not pace, and some others that 
both trotted and paced. A full account of these famous pacers 
will be found in the chapter on the Colonial Horse History of 
New England, and that on The American Pacer and his Relations 
to the American Trotter. 

William Penn did not visit his princely gift from Charles II. 
until 1683, and it was then under the government of the Duke of 
York. In giving a description of things as he found them he 
remarks: "The horses are not very handsome, but good," and 
this is all he says of them. Knowing that Pennsylvania, in the 
early part of this century, jDroduced larger and heavier horses 
than any other portion of the country, it was a great surprise to 
me to find the undoubted j)roof that a hundred years earlier she 
had produced the smallest and the lightest horses of any of the 
colonies. In the first half of the last century the average size of 
the horses of Eastern Pennsylvania was thirteen hands one and 
a quarter inches, and they Avere remarkably uniform in size. This 
was one-quarter inch below the average of the Virginians. Of 
the twenty-eight animals examined as to gait, twenty-four of 
them were natural pacers, three both paced and trotted, and a 
single one trotted only. Finding these two facts of uniformity 
of size and uniformity of gait together, we are prepared for 
another fact that follows, viz., in Philadelphia the pacers were 
more popular and fashionable than in any other city, so far as we 
can learn, and they were selected with great care and bred for 
their speed, and that speed was highly tested on the race-course. 
They Avere breeding for speed without much regard to size, and 
hence the uniformity. 

It has not been discovered that the colonists of Ncav Jersey 
made any direct importations of horses from England. Their 
original supplies Avere obtained from New York on the one side 
and Pennsylvania on the other. From these sources, therefore, 
Ave can form a correct estimate of the size and gaits of the Jersey 
horses, Avithout going into particular investigation. The only 
object, then, in referring to this colony is to prove that before 
1748 all kinds of racing had become so common in the colony as 



GENEEAL VIEAV OF THE FIELD. 15 

to be a nuisance. Consequently the legislative authority passed 
an act in 1748 for the suppression of "Running, Pacing and 
Trotting Eaces. " This was in strict harmony with the well-known 
condition of things in Philadelphia and vicinity very early in 
the century. If there had been no pacing races there would 
have been no legislation suppressing them. 

The horses of the colony of Maryland would necessarily partake 
of the characteristics of Virginia and Pennsylvania, from which 
she jirobably received her supply. There seems to be no evidence 
of direct importation. This colony was really the first, in point 
of time, to legislate for the suppression of pacing races. In 1747, 
one year before New Jersey, an act was passed forbidding pacing 
races in certain locations at certain times, and the avowed object 
was the protection of the Friends in holding their yearly meetings. 
Here, then, we have historic evidence that the three colonies of 
Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Virginia had frequent pacing 
races, and legislative evidence that Maryland and New Jersey 
had quite too many pacing races, early in the last century. It 
follows, then, that the other colonies indulged their sporting 
fancies in pacing races also. 

The colonies of North and South Carolina obtained their supply 
of horses from Virginia, and they possessed the same character- 
istics as the parent stock. The first permanent settlement in 
North Carolina was in 1653, but before this it had become the 
refuge of Quakers and others fleeing from the proscriptions that 
prevailed in Virginia against all who did not conform to the 
English church. Sonth Carolina received her charter in 1G63, at 
a time when horses were beginning to run wild in Virginia. In 
1747 thirty horses were advertised in which the size was given, 
and the average is within a small fraction of thirteen and a half 
hands high, and in this number two were given as fifteen hands, 
which was a very large borse for that day. The gait is given in 
only twelve cases — ten of which were pacers, one paced and trotted, 
and one trotted only. 

The chapter on the "Early Horse History of Canada" is very 
brief. It was not till the year 1665 that the first horses were 
brought over from France, and as they came from ancient Picardy, 
right across the Channel from England, it is reasonable to assume 
that they partook of the same characteristics as the English horses, 
and that many of them were pacers. Another theory of the 
origin of the Canadian pacer is the probability of clandestine trad- 



16 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ing with the New Englanders. Among the many impossible 
stories about the breeding of Old Tippoo, the greatest sire of 
Canada, the truth seems to come to the surface at last, and there 
can be no reasonable doubt that he was got by "Scape Goat." 
However much or little dependence can be placed upon many of 
the claims of fast pacing stallions coming from Canada, it must 
be conceded that some of these claims seem to be well founded, 
and that the pacing element has been greatly strengthened by 
blood from the other side of the border. 

The most striking fact in the history of the pacing habit of 
action is its great antiquity. The average Englishman of to-day 
and the average American of twenty years ago have been united 
in insisting with the greatest vehemence that the pace is not a 
natural but an acquired gait, resulting from some injury or mal- 
formation. One of the great leaders on that side of the discus- 
sion called it "structural incongruity" arising from the breeding 
of the "thoroughbred" horse on the "slab-sided" mares of the 
West and South, and thought the idea was unanswerable, but 
never cited any instances to prove it. Now, the truth is, the 
earliest unquestioned evidence we have that horses paced is that 
furnished by the chisel of Phidias when he sculptured the horses 
on the frieze of the Parthenon at Athens, and that is two 
thousand three hundred and thirty-three years old. From the 
period when the sons of Japheth turned their attention to horse- 
breeding on the fruitful plains and valleys in the regions of the 
mountains of Ararat down to this culmination of Greek art, I 
have not been able to find any contemporaneous evidence of 
the existence of the lateral habit of action; but as we knoAv it 
existed more than two thousand years ago, we are justified 
in concluding that among the original bands of horses, in their 
original habitat, pacers as Avell as trotters abounded. From the 
erection of the Parthenon in Athens, the occupation of Britain 
by the Eomans, and through all the centuries down to the plan- 
tation of the colonies in this country, we have mountains of indis- 
putable evidence of the antiquity of the pacer. In its j^lace this 
topic will be quite fully discussed. 

The relation which the pacer bears to the American Trotting 
Horse has for twenty-five years been a topic of much senseless 
discussion. In the historical sketch which served as an introduc- 
tion to the first volume of the "American Trotting Register," the 
attention of the breeding public was first called to this question. 



GENERAL VIEAV OF THE FIELD. 17 

in a form that was somewhat tentative, and much less didactic 
than my judgment suggested, but it served as an introduction to 
the study of the question which it foreshadowed. From this 
initial paragraph grew the discussion that has been going on ever 
since, much of which has been the merest jargon. The essential 
oneness of the trot and the pace has been clearly demonstrated by 
thousands of experiences. The trotting inheritance that pro- 
duces the fast trotter also produces the fast pacer; and the pacing 
inheritance that produces the fast pacer also produces the fast 
trotter. The trotting-bred John R. Gentry, with his pacing 
record of a mile in two minutes and one-half a second, is but a 
single instance of very many of the same character. The fastest 
harness racers in the world are the pacers, and it seems to make 
no difference whether the inheritance of speed comes from the 
trotter or the pacer. The subject of the pacer in his diversified 
historical relations to the American trotter Avill be found in dif- 
ferent portions of this work, and all tending to show the signifi- 
cant fact that he is again rapidly attaining the position of honor 
among the equine race which he maintained for so many centuries 
in the far-distant past. 

Early in this century the American Saddle Horse, the real 
saddle horse of all time, past and present, began to vanish from 
sight. Improved roads and wheeled vehicles superseded him, in 
great measure, long before the days of railroads. For business 
and travel he was the sole dependence of our forefathers for two 
hundred years, and in point of health it is a great misfortune 
that he has gone so completely out of use. The liorse that cannot 
take the "saddle gaits" and carry his rider without discomfort or 
fatigue is not a saddle horse. Springing up and down at every 
revolution of the horse is not riding for pleasure, but to avoid 
punishment and a torpid liver. In the chapter devoted to his 
description, origin, and breeding, it Avill be clearly shown that he 
is indebted to his pacing ancestry of the past centuries for his 
saddle gaits. As the mere matter of great speed cuts no figure in 
tlie qualifications of a saddle horse there is a wide field here for 
the production of style and beauty in the breeder's art. The aims 
of a goodly number of intelligent breeders are now moving in this 
direction, and with the foundations so well laid as they now are, 
we can look forward to a grand superstructure. As the breeder 
of speed at the trot goes to the horse that can do it himself, and 
as the breeder of speed at the gallop goes to the horse that can 



18 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

beat all the others, so the breeder of the saddler will go to the 
handsomest and best of all his tribe, and when we reach the horse 
that is perfect in symmetry, style, quality, and disposition, he will 
be a saddle horse and no questions will be asked about what par- 
ticular combinations of blood he may possess. He will be strictly 
eclectic, with the one exception of the inheritance of gait, and he 
will be the result of wise choosing in his size and structure, and 
of skillful handling in his disposition and manners. 

The Wild Horse of the plains and pampas of North and South 
America was at one time an object of great interest and curiosity 
with all our people. No schoolboy of sixty or seventy years ago 
knew any lesson in his geography so well as the one which pic- 
tured and described the millions of wild horses that roamed over 
the Western plains. In the field of imagination and exaggerated 
fiction he was a fairly good second to the Arabian — both arrant 
humbugs, at least so far as their merits have been tested. In the 
past, the question has sometimes been asked, tentatively, 
whether the horse may not have been indigenous on this conti- 
nent? The paleontologists have undertaken to answer this ques- 
tion in the affirmative and have produced the bones of what they 
call the horse to prove it. This "horse" is scant fifteen inches 
high and he has three, four or five toes on each foot. These toes 
resemble "claws" more than anything else. They tell us these 
little animals flourished over two millions of years before man was 
placed on the earth, and that they are now found imbedded in 
the solid rock, say two hundred feet below the general surface. 
The outline drawing of horses on works supposed to have been 
erected by a prehistoric and lost race, and also the linguistic ques- 
tion as to whether any of the oldest Indian tribes had any word 
representing the horse, will be fully considered, with that pre- 
sented by the paleontologists, in the chapter devoted to the AViLd 
Horse. Too much prominence has been given to the horses of 
Cortez in his conquest of Mexico, as the progenitors of the Amer- 
ican wild horse. He had very few horses in his command, and it 
is very doubtful whether any of them escaped the slaughter of 
battle and found a home in the wilderness. The horses in the 
army of the unfortunate Ferdinand De Soto, that were aban- 
doned on the confines of Texas, after his death, became the joro- 
genitors of all the wild horses of North America. 

The remarkable pre-eminence to which Messenger attained as 
the founder of a great race of trotters, in his own right and by 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 19> 

his own power, and more especially as he was the only English- 
imported running horse that ever showed any tendency whatever 
in that direction, the study of Messenger's lineage becomes a 
question of very great interest and value to all students of trot- 
ting history. His sire, Mambrino, was a great race horse, and 
was distinguished above all others of his generation, or indeed of 
any other generation, before or since, as the progenitor of a tribe 
of coach horses of great excellence and value. In addition 
to this, the evidence seems to be conclusive that he had a natural 
and undeveloped trotting step that far surpassed that of all other 
running horses of his day. His sire. Engineer, was notoriously 
short on the side of his dam, and his grandsire, Sampson, was a 
half-breed of great size and bone, and ran some winning races, in 
the best of company, for that day. 

The history of Messenger himself is still clouded in mystery, 
and the blood he inherited from his dam remains hopelessly un- 
known. The identity of his importer and owner has never been 
established, which of itself throws a suspicion upon the pedigree 
that is said to have come with him. He ran several races at 
Newmarket, England, and proved himself a second or third-rate 
race horse. The racing records there show that he was by 
Mambrino, and that is all that is known about his inheritance. 
He left a few tolerably good race horses, for their time, but he 
filled the country with the best road and driving horses that the 
horsemen of this country had ever known. A chapter each to 
Messenger's ancestors and to himself will be found in their proper 
places in this volume. The twenty years of Messenger's life and 
service in this country fell in a period of indifference to all kinds 
of racing except running. The English race horse was then the 
popular idol, and it is not known that any of his sons or daugh- 
ters were ever trained to trot. Neither can it now be certainly 
determined that any of them were disposed to pace, but if we 
may judge of the habits of action of his immediate progeny by 
what we know of succeeding generations, we can hardly doubt 
that there were pacers among them. As the custom then was, 
and as it so remained for at least half a century later, all pacers 
were hidden away from public sight, as they were supposed to 
furnish evidence of ignoble breeding. 

The chapter on "The Sons of Messenger" will be long, but it 
will be of exceeding interest. They constitute the connecting 
link that brings together the peculiar trotting instincts of tlie 



20 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

sire and develops them in their own progeny. Several of them 
were not only trained to run, bat did run successfully. It is not 
known that any of his sons was ever trained to trot, but it is 
known from contemporaneous evidence that several of them were 
fast natural trotters, notably Bishop's Hambletonian, Bush Mes- 
senger, Winthrop Messenger, Mambrino, etc., all of which will 
be considered in their proper place. When we reach the seco'nd 
remove from Messenger we begin to enter into the full fruition 
of all the promises, and in considering such animals as Abdallah, 
Almack, Mambrino Paymaster, Harris' Hambletonian, etc., we 
begin to feel that we are well witliin the trotting latitudes, for 
this remove began to found families and tribes that attracted the 
attention of all intelligent breeders. 

In the next remove from Messenger we strike the most famous 
of all trotting progenitors in Kysdyk's Hambletonian. At one 
time there was an active and determined diflference of opinion 
among breeders as to which of three horses, Hambletonian, Ethan 
Allen, or Mambrino Chief, Avould in the end prove to be the most 
successful sire. This controversy may not be remembered by the 
younger of the present generation of horsemen, but it was bitter 
and uncompromising, and it presents a lesson so important that it 
may be here referred to. The adherents of Ethan Allen argued 
that as he was handsomer, that his gait was the very perfection of 
trotting action, and that he was incomparably faster than either 
of the other two, he must of necessity prove the most success- 
ful in begetting trotters. The adherents of Mambrino Chief 
used the same argument, with the exception of beauty and style, 
and dwelt strongly on the fact that he was a faster horse than 
Hambletonian, and would consequently get faster offspring. 
Both these arguments were good, so far as they went, but they 
lacked completeness and hence were not sound. Neither Ethan 
Allen nor Mambrino Chief had a dam, and so far as we know the 
inheritance of both was restricted to the male side of the house. 
Development of speed is a valuable and real qualification in any 
sire, but all experience goes to show that it is only a help to an 
inheritance. Hambletonian was not much developed, but it is 
conceded on all hands that he could show a 2:40 gait at any time 
and that his action was very perfect. He was got by a grandson 
of Messenger, whose dam, Amazonia, was one of the fastest mares 
of her generation, whatever her blood may have been. Abdallah 
got more and faster trotters than any other grandson of Messenger, 



GENERAL VIEAV OF THE FIELD. 21 

and his daughters were very famous as the producers of trotters. 
Ilambletonian's dam, iAie Kent Mare, was by imported Bell- 
founder, a horse that got no trotters practically, but this mare 
was the fastest four-year-old of her time, and that because she was 
out of a very fast mare. One Eye, that was a double granddaugh- 
ter of Messenger. That is. One Eye was by Hambletonian, the 
son of Messenger, and out of Silvertail, a daughter of Messenger. 
This double Messenger mare was unknown to the trotting turf, 
but she was well known throughout Orange County as a remark- 
ably fast trotter. Hence Hambletonian not only possessed more 
Messenger blood than any horse of his generation, but that blood 
came to him through developed trotters, and he had a right to 
surpass all competitors, especially the two that were, at one time, 
the most prominent. 

Several of the sons of Hambletonian, as shown by the tabular 
statistics which will be introduced, became greater than their 
sire, not only in getting trotters from their own loins, but in 
transmitting the trotting instinct to their descendants. The 
groAvth and spread of this family is far and away beyond any prece- 
dent that can be cited in any age or country, and is simply mar- 
velous. It is said that fully ninety per cent, of the fast trotters 
now on the turf have more»or less of the blood of Hambletonian 
in their veins, and I think it is a safe conclusion to say that 
no intelligent breeder in all the country is trying to produce 
trotters without it. All the other tribes are dropping out of 
sight, and at the present ratio of rise and fall it will be but a few 
years till every trotter on the turf will be credited in some 
degree to the one really great progenitor, Hambletonian. The 
other tribes will not be blotted out nor will their merits be lost, 
but absorbed into the mightier tribe. 

Such families as the Bashaws, the Clays, the Black Hawks, the 
Mambrino Chiefs, the Pilots, the American Stars, the Blue Bulls, 
etc., will be fully considered through several chapters, according 
to their strength and merit. As these families have not been 
able to hold their own in the rush to the front, and as they seem 
to be falling further to the rear in the number and quality of 
their performers each succeeding year, we may as well begin to 
designate tliem as "the minor families." Their inheritance was 
feeble and unsatisfactory, and more or less sporadic, and we never 
had any right to expect a brilliant and permanent success from 
such beginnings. 



2:3 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

As the investigation of disputed, spurious and fraudulent pedi- 
grees Avas a prime necessity in order to reach safe and honest 
grounds upon which to build up a breed of trotters, much of my 
time through all my editorial life was devoted to this kind of 
investigation. From the first page of the first volume of the 
"Register" I was deeply impressed with the importance of having 
all pedigrees absolutely correct, and this impression grew into a 
vital conviction that without this a breed of trotters never could 
be established. I soon found that I had accepted from some 
breeders of the very highest respectability a goodly number of 
pedigrees that were thoroughly rotten in their extensions. This 
taught me that I must study the moral fiber of breeders critically, 
as well as their pedigrees, and that from the highest to the 
lowest. Some men are honest from principle and because it is 
right to be honest, while others are honest because "honesty is 
the best policy." Some men are dishonest because of ignorance, 
others because they were born cheats, but the most dangerous of 
all rogues is the man who will utter a false pedigree and then 
prove it by trained witnesses who, for half a dollar, can remember 
whatever is necessary and forget whatever might be against their 
employer's interest. By this kind of evidence a man can prove 
anything. Not very long ago a man proved that a certain mare 
came out of a certain other mare, and when that was shown to be 
impossible he turned round and proved (?) that she was out of 
another mare, and there was just as much truth in the one as the 
other, and not a single word of truth in either. So long as there 
are men in the world there will be rogues among them, but the 
intelligence of the public in breeding matters has so greatly ad- 
vanced that many an honest man would begin to doubt his own 
sanity if he were even to think of breeding in lines that he was 
once ready to fight for as the only right and successful way to 
breed. The brainless advocacy of "more running blood in the 
trotter," Avas substantially the basis of the Avhole brood of dis- 
honest pedigrees, against which it became my duty to wage war; 
but to-day no intelligent man in all the land can be found to ad- 
vocate any such balderdash unless it be in the foolish support of 
thoughtless opinions previously expressed. 

The subject of "How the Trotting Horse is Bred," is a most 
interesting one because it is entirely new in animal economy and 
is distinctively American. The initial thought that opened the 
door to the practical and scientific consideration of the subject 



GENERAL VIEW OF THE FIELD. 23 

was the happy conception," in the spring of 1872, of the little 
phrase, "Trotting Instinct." Following this with the definition 
of the word ''instinct" as being "the sum of inherited habits," 
the term expressed in two words and the definition of it in five 
words, put the whole subject in a form that was easily compre- 
hensible and flashed upon the mind as thoroughly practical. 
This little phrase, with its definition, when once comprehended; 
is a very complete epitome of all that has been taught and all 
that has been learned of the art of breeding the trotter. It not 
only embraces, but requires, the trotting inheritance as the only 
starting point, which must be strengthened and the instinct in- 
tensified by the development of the speed of succeeding genera- 
tions. It stood some years at the parting of the ways between 
intelligence and ignorance, between enlightened judgment and 
stupid prejudice, between honesty and dishonesty, but now it is 
accepted, in practice, as the universal law from one end of the 
land to the other. Thus, we have not only added millions to the 
wealth of the country, but without any outside assistance or in- 
struction we have produced a horse that by way of pre-eminence, 
throughout the world, is justly entitled to be designated, "The 
Horse of America." 



CHAPTER 11. 

ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 

No indications that tlie horse was originally wild — The steppes of High Asia 
and Arabia not tenable as his original home — Color not sufficient evidence — 
Impossibility of horses existing in Arabia in a wild state — No horses in 
Arabia until 356 a.d. — Large forces of Armenian, Median, and Cappadocian 
cavalry employed more than one thousand seven hundred years B.C. — A 
breed of white race horses — Special adaptability of the Armenian country 
to the horse — Armenia a horse-exporting country before the Prophet 
Ezekiel — Devotion of the Armenian people to agricultural and pastoral 
pursuits through a period of four thousand years — All the evidences point 
to ancient Armenia as the center from which the horse was distributed. 

Ix undertaking to consider and determine what particular por- 
tion of the earth was the original habitat of the horse, we must 
not forget that we are in a field that antedates all history, both 
sacred and profane. When we have gone back to the very first 
dawnings of historical records we are still far short of the period 
in which initial light can be reached. In profane history, with 
more or less safety, we can get back to a point about seventeen 
hundred years before the Christian era; and in sacred history 
about two hundred years less. At both of these dates the horses 
referred to were not in a feral state, but were the companions 
and servants of man. 

There have been two separate theories advanced which demand 
some attention, because of the eminence and learning of the men 
who have advanced them. The first is that the original habitat 
of the horse was on the steppes of High Asia, east and north of 
the Caspian and the Black Sea. The only argument I have ever 
seen advanced in support of this theory is based upon the great 
number of wild horses that are found in that part of the world, 
and that so many of them are of a dun color. From the fre- 
quency of the recurrence of the dun color another theory has 
sprung up to the effect that the original color of the horse was 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 25 

dun, and hence it is argued tliat when the dun color appears in 
our own day it must be taken as evidence that the original color 
of the horse was dun. This reasoning is very far from being 
conclusive, for there are dun horses and dun tribes in all breeds, 
just as there are greys, and the color is just as liable to be trans- 
mitted as any other color. In the last century there were many 
dun horses in England, and at least one of that color was adver- 
tised very widely as "the Dun Arabian," probably a foreign 
horse, but it is hardly possible that he was an Arabian. It was then 
the custom of the country to call all foreign horses "Arabians," 
no difference from what part of the world they came. It has 
been stated on what seemed to be good authority that a dun 
horse once won the Derby, but Avh ether the color may result from 
line breeding or from atavistic tendencies, the argument advanced 
does not seem to have any weight in it for the purpose intended. 

Another argument in favor of the wild and unknown regions 
east and north of the Casi)ian as the habitat of the horse has 
been urged with much more power and effect. It has been ac- 
cepted and reiterated by so many learned men, one after another, 
that I doubted the wisdom of attempting to overthrow it, until I 
found the spot in which it was fatally weak. This view of the 
question seems to rest upon the fact that the successive hosts of 
Barbarians that overran Europe in the early centuries of the 
Christiali era brought their horses, as well as their flocks and 
herds, with them, and it is assumed that these horses were the 
first brought into Europe. This involves a total misconception 
of dates; not of a few years merely, but of many centuries. All 
of Europe, including Britain, and all of Northern Africa, were 
abundantly supplied with horses, probably a thousand years 
before the first destructive wave of Barbarians touched Europe. 
Linguistic and ethnological facts clearly prove that those people 
came from Asia, and possibly from a part of Asia where there 
were horses running wild, but that does not prove that they came 
from the original habitat of the horse. With no dates, either 
definite or approximate, to support this theory, and with no 
specific portion of the earth fixed upon as the general locality 
from which they came, it resolves itself into a mere speculation 
with nothing to support it, except the fact that different writers 
have been copying it from one another, without throwing any 
additional light upon it, for a number of generations. 

The most remarkable and at the same time the most untenable 



36 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

of all the claims that have been urged about the horse is that he 
was indigenous in Arabia. We can tolerate any number of foolish 
claims set up to show that the Arabian horse is superior to all 
others, for such assertions can be tested and disproved, as they 
have been a thousand times, but the claim that Arabia was the 
original habitat of the horse is so utterly preposterous, and yet so 
widely advocated by writers and others who know nothing'about 
it, that we must consider it with some brief deliberation. When 
the maimed and crippled horses of De Soto were turned loose and 
abandoned on the plains of Texas, they had all around them the 
means of an abundant and healthy subsistence, and they multi- 
plied and grew into an innumerable host that made the earth 
tremble when they moved in great masses. Under the same 
favorable conditions of water and pasture, the same results fol- 
lowed on the pampas of South America. Upon the early settle- 
ment of Virginia, as well probably as in some of the other 
colonies, and within two hundred years, many of the horses of 
the colonists strayed away, became wild and remained so, prop- 
agating and increasing for generations, and until the growing 
numbers of their former masters captured or exterminated them. 
The varied herbage of the forest and its grassy swales, and 
streams of pure water everywhere, made Virginia a paradise for 
the horse in his feral state. 

Buffon, the French naturalist of a hundred and fifty years ago, 
notices the theory of the wild horses of Arabia, but he is careful 
not to commit himself nor indorse it in any form. In Vol. I., p. 
237, he says: "According to Mannol, the Arabian horses are de- 
scended from the wild horses in the deserts of Arabia, of which, 
in ancient times, large studs were formed," etc. In going fur- 
ther, to find where Mannol got his information, it ajjpears that 
somebody, with an unpronounceable name that I have forgotten, 
told him so. Major Upton, a very intelligent but very credulous 
modern writer on what he saw and learned in the desert, says he 
never heard of this story of wild horses in Arabia, and pro- 
nounces it a "fallacy." When we consider that Arabia never was 
conquered and the reason why, although Kome, at the very culmi- 
nation of her power, followed by Assyria and Egypt, all failed of 
their purpose without meeting an enemy in battle, we must ac- 
cept the fact that nature had interposed a barrier that military 
poAver could not surmount. The barrenness and aridity of the 
desert has always protected the Arabs against the most power- 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 27 

ful armies of the mightiest nations. Now, to maintain that wild 
horses could not only live, but flourish and increase, in a country 
where there was not enough edible herbage on a thousand acres 
to keep a grasshopper alive, and not a running stream of water 
within five hundred miles, requires a measure of mental sterility 
that can be found nowhere but among a few of the writers on 
the Arabian horse. Of all the curiosities in which the literature of 
the Arabian horse abounds and in the multitudinous efforts to give 
him the primacy among horses, there seems to be nothing quite 
so absurd as this story about his being indigenous to the desert. 
Animals in a wild state are never found except in countries and 
districts where the conditions surrounding provide them with 
food and Avater. How long would a band of strong, healthy 
horses live if turned loose to seek their own subsistence in the 
desert of Arabia? Of all the countries on the face of the globe 
there is no one where the horse is so completely dependent upon 
the care and support of his master as Arabia. 

Fortunately, we are not left for data to unwritten traditions 
two thousand years old, nor to the fervid imaginations of a race 
of cutthroats and thieves of the very lowest order of civilization, 
but we can turn, with full confidence, to authentic contempora- 
neous history, from which we can settle this question, at once 
and for all time. Strabo, the great Greek geographer and philos- 
opher, flourished in the reign of Augustus, at the very beginning 
of the Christian era. He describes Arabia just as we know it 
to-day, for all countries have changed in their boundaries and 
government except Arabia. He describes the people as chiefly 
nomadic, and as breeders of camels. The most remarkable thing 
in this description is the fact, found in his great work. Vol. Ill,, p. 
190, that they had no horses at that time. The exact language 
used in this statement will be found in the next chapter of this 
work. The question now arises. If there were no horses in Arabia 
at the beginning of the Christian era, when and how did they 
become possessed of them? Fortunately, again, written history 
supplies the answer to this question. In my next chapter will be 
found, quoted at some length, the circumstances bearing on this 
question. In brief, the facts are as follows: Philostorgius, a dis- 
tinguished Greek theologian, wrote an ecclesiastical history in the 
fifth century which is no longer extant. Photius, at one time 
Patriarch of Constantinople, in the ninth century wrote an 
epitome of the work by Philostorgius and to this epitome we are: 



lis THE IIOKSE OF AMERICA. 

indebted for the facts Ave here relate. Constantius, at the time of 
which Philostorgius wrote, was on the throne of the Eastern 
empire, and was exceedingly zealous in spreading and strengthen- 
ing the Christian religion. He learned that the prince of Arabia 
Felix (that part of Arabia which we will designate by its modern 
name Yemen) was strongly disposed to come out with his people 
and embrace Christianity. Constantius thereupon determined 
to encourage both prince and people in the movement they were 
contemplating, and he sent them a grand embassy with many 
valuable presents, the most noted of which were two hundred 
*'well-bred Cappadocian horses." The embassy was completely 
successful, and Theopholis, who had been made a bishop and 
placed at the head of it, remained there several years. This was 
in the year 356 of the Christian era, and is the first intimation we 
have in all history of horses in Arabia. These are the facts, so 
far as any facts are known, upon the consideration of which I am 
not able to assent to the claim that either High Asia or Arabia 
was the original habitat of the horse. 

I have been surprised at the number of coincidences that seem 
to point to ancient Armenia as the first habitation of the horse. 
This country at one time was a very powerful kingdom, extending 
from the mountains of Caucasus on the north to Media or Assyria 
on the south, and from the Caspian Sea on the east to the 
Euphrates on the west, and at one time even to the Mediter- 
ranean. It was intersected by several ranges of mountains and 
not only gave rise to the Euphrates and the Tigris, but to a num- 
ber of smaller rivers. It was well watered everywhere, and pro- 
duced in great abundance all varieties of herbage, cereals, and 
fruits. It was originally called Ararat by the Hebrews, probably 
after a range of mountains about central to the territory em- 
braced, and because Noah's Ark rested somewhere "on the 
mountains of Ararat." It is also called Togarmah in Scripture, 
after Torgom, son of Gomer, who was the son of Japheth, the 
son of Noah. Japheth seems to have been the oldest son of 
Noah, and he chose this fruitful region as the future home of his 
descendants. The Eev. Michael Chamich, a native Armenian, 
Avent back into the old Armenian records, translated the language 
as originally used, and wrote a history of the country from its 
first settlement; and this history has been Englished by Johannes 
Adval, another native Armenian, and published in Calcutta in 
1837. This work seems to be worthy of credence, and it clearly 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 29" 

establishes the lineal descent of the governing family back to 
. Japheth, the son of Noah. The order of succession as the head 
of the tribe continues through several generations unbroken, from 
father to son. Gomer, the son of Japheth, was succeeded by his 
s«n Togarmah, then followed Haicus, Armenac, Aramais, 
Amassia, Gelam, Harma, Aram, Arab, who was slain in battle, 
his son Cardus (at twelve years old), Anushaven, who died with- 
out issue and was succeeded by Paret, who reigned fifty years 
and during his reign the patriarch Joseph died in Egypt, B.C. 
1635. These princes all had long reigns. Haicus was the 
first of the line to assume the title of king, and he was greatly 
distinguished for extending the boundaries of his kingdom. 
Gelam extended his borders to the Caspian. Aram was fifty- 
eight years on the throne, during which time he had a war with 
the Medes, and also with the Oappadocians, in both of which he 
had a large force of cavalry in the field. This was about seven- 
teen hundred years before the Christian era, and is the first men- 
tion of cavalry that I have found in history, either sacred or pro- 
fane. In both these wars his cavalry was met by the cavalry of 
the enemy, equal to or greater than his in numbers. How long 
before this troops may have been mounted on horses it is impos- 
sible to say, but from the numbers so used at that period of the 
world by the neighboring nations and tribes, as the Medes, the 
Cappadocians, etc., it is fair to conclude that the horse had then 
been an important factor in all military movements for many 
generations. When we consider two opposing armies, each pro- 
vided with divisions of five thousand cavalry, the period being 
about B.C. 1700, with no dates beyond that are known as relating 
to the horse, we are shut up to our own reasoning as to the num- 
ber of centuries that may have been required to produce these 
great numbers. It must have been at least one century, or it may 
have been three of four, and this would carry us back to the head 
of the house of Japheth. 

If we accept Egyptian chronology, which still lacks much of 
being reliable, one of the Pharaohs, named Thutmosis I., invaded 
Syria, passing up through Palestine till he reached the latitude of 
Aleppo, and then turned eastward and crossed the Euphrates. 
His campaign was successful; he fought many battles and returned 
laden with spoils, especially horses and chariots of war. This was 
liefore the Israelites reached the promised land, and before 
Joshua's battle with the "Northern kings," in which they had 



30 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

"horsemen and chariots very many," and which is the earliest 
Scriptural instance in which horses were employed in battle. 

The territory embracing the ancient countries of Eastern Asia 
Minor, bounded on the north by the Black Sea and the Caucas- 
ian mountains, on the south by the thirty-seventh degree of 
north latitude, and extending to the Caspian Sea, has always 
been remarkable for the variety, value, and abundance of its agri- 
cultural products. Many of the very early historians have noted 
the fact that each one of the countries embraced in this territory 
was distinguished for the excellence and numbers of horses pro- 
duced, and they appear in about the following order, namely, 
Armenia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Media. The last-named country 
embraced Avhat is now the northern part of Persia, and as between 
the "Medes" and the "Persians" there is no little confusion in 
the public mind, as sometimes one was on top and sometimes the 
other. Then, to add to the confusion, the Assyrians came in, 
occupying the same country and the same capitals. For our 
present purposes it is not necessary to enter into the considera- 
tion of these successive dynasties. The Modes were comparatively 
newcomers, and as they were a great military people their promi- 
nence in horse history resulted more from the spoils of war and 
the tribute in horses that they collected from their neighbors 
than from their own production. Kitto says that in the time of 
the Persian empire the plain of Nissseum was celebrated for its 
horses and horse races. This plain was near the city of Nissaea, 
around which were fine pr.sture lands, producing excellent clover. 
. The horses were "entirely white" (probably grey) and of extraor- 
dinary height and beauty, as well as speed. They constituted 
part of the luxury of the great, and a tribute in kind was paid 
from them to the monarch, who, like all Eastern sovereigns, used 
to delight in equestrian display. Some idea of the oisulence of 
the country may be had when it is known that, independently of 
imposts rendered in money. Media (then the undermost dog), 
paid a yearly tribute of not less than three thousand horses, 
four thousand mules, and nearly one hundred thousand sheep. 
The races, once celebrated through the world, seem to exist no 
more. 

When Darius the Mede had extended his empire over the 
whole of Western Asia and Egypt, he exacted heavy tribute in 
horses from all subjugated provinces. This was about 520 B.C., 
and antedated the racing referred to above. In all parts of his 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 31 

extended empire he built roads and established lines of couriers, 
mounted on fleet horses, that there might be no delay in receiv- 
ing at his capital and sending out again intelligence of what was 
transpiring in any part of his dominions. For this service the 
best and fleetest horses were required, and the only guide we 
have to determine how these horses were selected we find in the 
fact that the tribute collected from the little kingdom of Cilicia, 
formerly a part of Cappadocia, was, in addition to a stated sum of 
money, one white horse for every day in the year. It is possible 
that these white Cilician horses may have been the progenitors of 
the white (grey) race horses spoken of in Media. 

In describing the general fruitfulness of Cappadocia, Strabo 
says: "Cappadocia was also rich in herds and flocks, but more 
particularly celebrated for its breed of horses." Strabo speaks 
of this as a leading characteristic of the country and doubtless it 
had held pre-eminence in this respect for generations before he 
wrote. Three hundred and fifty-six years later, when Constan- 
tiuswas selecting his presents of horses for the prince and people 
of Yemen, in Arabia, he knew just where to look, in all his 
dominions, for the best of their kind, and selected two hundred 
"well-bred" ones for Arabia. Sir R. Wilson, in discussing the 
quality of the Russian cavalry horses about 1810, had evidently 
heard of this Cappadocian origin of the Arabian horse, but, un- 
fortunately, he got all the parties badly mixed in his reference. 
He makes Constantine instead of Constantius the donor of three 
hundred Cappadocian horses, instead of two hundred, and they 
are given to one of the African princes, instead of to an Arabian 
prince. The African traveler, Bruce, found some excellent horses 
in Nubia, Africa, and from their high quality and unusually large 
size he seems to have jumped to the conclusion that these were 
the descendants of the three hundred from Constantine. 

After glancing over all the different countries in this great 
zone as defined above, and extending from the Bosphorus to the 
Caspian Sea, one cannot fail to be impressed with its special 
adaptation to the production and sustenance of all varieties of 
domestic animals, in their greatest perfection. Here the country 
seems to have been made for the horse, and the horse for the 
country. Here was a country suited to his nativity, and here we 
find records of his existence centuries earlier than in any other 
country. The wild ass flourished in this country, but I have not 
been able to find any evidence or indication that the horse was 



:j2 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

not always the companion and servant of man. Wherever he is 
found in a feral state reasons that are amply satisfactory are 
never wanting to account for that state. Ancient historians have 
specially noted each of the princij)al countries embraced in this 
zone for the superiority and numbers of its horses, but no one 
has made any allusion to wild horses, nor suggested that there 
may have been a time when their ancestors were wild. 

Now, as we have designated a long and wide region of Western 
Asia, embracing a number of different nationalities and govern- 
ments, as the probable original habitat of the horse, can we go 
further and designate the particular nationality or government 
in which was his original home and from which he was distrib- 
uted to adjoining nations or peoples? In answer to this ques- 
tion, we cannot present any dates of record earlier than about 
1700 B.C., and this date will apply as well to Media and Cappa- 
docia as to Armenia. We must, therefore, consider it in the 
light of other facts and circumstances, not dependent upon 
specific dates. In the first place, and taking the Mosaic account 
of the deluge as the starting point, "'the ark rested on the moun- 
tains of Ararat." This is the original name of a country, inter- 
sected by a mountain range, and that range took its name from 
the country in which it was found. "Mount Ararat" was simply 
a very high peak in that range. The distinction should be ob- 
served here between "the mountains of Ararat" and "Mount 
Ararat." In the second place, it is clearly established by all his- 
tory that near the base of this mountain range Japheth and his 
descendants had their homes. His son Gomer was highly dis- 
tinguished in his day, and his grandson, Togarmah, son of 
Gomer, became a powerful chief. To such prominence did he 
rise in the affairs of his age that for centuries after his day his 
country was called "Togarmah." Hence we have the three 
names, Ararat, Togarmah and Armenia applied in sacred and 
profane history to the same country that we are now considering. 

During the continuance of the dynasty of King Haic or Haicus, 
the son of Togarmah, the Armenians became a very j^rosperous 
and powerful people. They did not seem to be an aggressive or 
Avarlike people, although their boundaries were greatly extended, 
but a thrifty agricultural and industrious people. Breeding and 
marketing horses seem to have been their leading employments. 
In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Prophet Ezekiel he gives a 
catalogue of the different peoples trading with the great 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 33 

Phoenician merchants and the products of their countries, in which 
they traded. This catalogue was written five hundred and fifty- 
eight years before the Christian era, and is very remarkable 
for its extent and completeness. It not only shows what the 
Phoenicians carried away to the West, in their "Ships of 
Tarshish," but also what they brought back for distribution 
among their customers in Western Asia. I willquote, from 
the revised version, two or three of the classes of articles 
enumerated, embracing both import and export trade. Of 
foreign imports he says: "Tarshish" (Spain and beyond) "was 
thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches; 
with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded for thy wares." Of 
articles for export he says: "They of the house of Togarmah 
traded for thy wares with horses and war-horses and mules." 
"Togarmah" here means "Armenia," and this is the only in- 
stance in which horses are mentioned in the catalogue. I will 
give another quotation, not because it is conclusive in itself, but 
because it is confirmatory of Strabo's statement that there were 
no horses in Arabia in his day. He says: "Arabia and all the 
princes of Kedar, they were the merchants of thy hand; in lambs, 
and rams, and goats, in these were they thy merchants." Other 
products from more southern portions of Arabia are enumerated, 
but no horses. This is the initial step toward the general dis- 
tribution of horsesj by the Phoenician merchants, which will be 
developed in the next chapter. 

In speaking of Media (Vol. II., p. 265), Strabo says: "The 
country is peculiarly adapted, as well as Armenia, to the breed- 
ing of horses." Of one district not far from the Caspian he re- 
marks: "Here, it is said, fifty thousand mares were pastured in 
the time of the Persians, and were the king's stud. The Nes- 
saean horses, the best and the largest in the king's province, 
were of this breed, according to some writers, but according to 
others they were from Armenia." Again he says: "Cappadocia 
paid to the Persians, yearly, in addition to a tribute in silver, 
one thousand five hundred horses, two thousand mules, and fifty 
thousand sheep, and the Medes contributed nearly double this 
amount." 

Of Armenia he says, p. 271: "The country is so well adapted, 
being nothing inferior in this respect to Media, for breeding horses 
that the race of Nessaean horses, which the king of Persia used. 



34 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

is found here also; the satrap of Armenia used to send annually 
to the king of Persia twenty thousand young horses." 

The Ness^an horses, so famous for their speed, were the 
"thoroughbreds" of their day, and there can hardly be a doubt 
they originated in Armenia, and, just like our own "thorough- 
breds," they were essentially the result of careful selection 
through a series of generations, and of breeding only from 
animals possessing the desired qualifications in the highest 
degree. In the earlier days of racing in Media, it appears that 
white was the fashionable color, but I am disposed to think that 
grey, growing white with age, was the color intended to be ex- 
pressed by the writers of that period. The "albino" color is 
abnormal and supposed to indicate tenderness and lack of stamina. 

There is one fact, in considering this question, to which I have 
probably not given sufficient prominence and weight. So far as 
the records go, the three countries of Armenia, Cappadocia, and 
Media are synchronous in having mounted troops in their 
armies seventeen hundred years before the Christian era. We 
must, therefore, consider the conditions of these countries ante- 
cedent to the period of 1700 B.C. Of Cappadocia we know abso- 
lutely nothing historically until it was conquered by Cyrus, king 
of Persia, about 588 B.C. Of Media the earliest knowledge we 
have of a historical character does not go back further than about 
842 B.C. It should be observed that I here speak of "historical" 
knowledge and not of uncertain traditions of many centuries 
earlier. Both of these nations with their distinctive nationalities 
have, long since, been wiped off the surface of the earth. 

When we reach Armenia, we reach a people with a most re- 
markable history, extending back for more than four thousand 
years. This history, although not wholly free from criticism or 
doubt, seems to be honestly written and worthy of a liberal 
measure of confidence. That ■ the children of Japheth should 
have settled at the foot of the mountains of Ararat strikes every 
one as a very natural event, but that their descendants should still 
be there, through all the triumphs and oppressions of four thou- 
sand years, is one of the most stupendous facts in the history of 
the world. From the very first we know of them they seem to 
have been an agricultural people, strongly attached to their 
native soil. When they ruled over the land from the Caspian to 
the Mediterranean, they built no great cities, but adhered stead- 
fastly to the rural pursuits of their fathers, and this, probably, 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 35 

•was the chief cause of their weakness. Their wealth and sources 
of wealth were chiefly in their horses, and these they sold to the 
merchants of Sidon and Tyre, who carried them to all the nations 
of Europe and Africa, commencing with Egypt, and supplying all 
wants as far as Spain and Morocco, and beyond, probably, as far 
as Britain. The Phcenician merchants were the first to open 
commercial transactions with Europe and Africa, and they were 
in control of the commerce of the world long before King Solomon 
entered into commercial partnership with Hiram, king of Tyre. 
Armenia had horses to sell long before they had horses in Egypt, 
and Phoenicia had ships and enterprise to carry them there. 
There is a fitting of interests here that seems to point to Armenia 
as the great original source of supply, and as the original habitat 
of the horse. 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 

First evidences of horses in Egypt about 1700 B.C. — Supported by Egyptiai* 
records and history — The Patriarch Job had no horses — Solomon's great 
cavalry force organized — Arabia as described by Strabo at the beginning of 
our era — No horses then in Arabia — Coustantius sends two hundred 
Cappadocian horses into Arabia a.d. 356 — Arabia tlie last country to be 
supplied with horses — The ancient Phoenician merchants and their colonies 
— Hannibal's cav^alry forces in the Punic Wars — Distant ramifications of 
Phoenician trade and colonization — Commerce reached as far as Britain and 
the Baltic — Probable source of Britain's earliest horses. 

Having considered the different theories or opinions as to the 
original habitat of the horse and the means and facilities by which 
distribution to the different portions of the earth may have been 
effected, I have omitted land migration, which will be self-evident 
to all as an important factor in the problem. It is now in order, 
therefore, to consider such dates and facts as are pertinent and 
may be gleaned from history, sacred and profane. 

When Abraham, with Sarah his wife, visited Egypt about 1920 
B.C., the Pharaoh for her sake bestowed upon him many gifts: 
"Sheep and oxen and he asses and men servants and maid serv- 
ants and she asses and camels." Among these great gifts there 
were no horses, evidently because Egypt had no horses at that 
time. There is no mention nor reference to horses in Egypt till 
Joseph became prime minister two hundred years later, when 
there were a few horses, and they were traded or sold to Joseph by 
their owners in exchange for food, not in droves, but as individ- 
uals. These scriptural facts in the experiences of Abraham and 
Joseph seem to be circumstantially sustained by the discoveries 
of those learned Egyptologists who, in late years and with the 
spade in their hands, have resurrected so much of history that had 
been buried for thousands of years. It was during the reign of 
the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, that Abraham and Joseph were 
in Egypt, and in order to approximate the time when horses were 
first introduced, we must glance at a few facts in connection with 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 37 

what is known of the Hyksos. Some have claimed they were from 
Ohaldea, some from Northern Syria and Asia Minor, and some 
again from Phoenicia, and it is one of the strangest things in his- 
tory that a great nation should be overthrown and held in sub- 
jection for over five hundred years and nobody know who did it. 
Then again, it is equally incomprehensible that any nation should 
have subdued Egypt and held it in bondage so long and yet never 
have claimed the honor of having done so. Still another mystery 
remains that never has been solved, and that is, what became of 
the Shepherds and their followers when they were driven out? 
At the period of the conquest the governing class was rent by 
factions and under a weak and tyrannical king. The Delta and 
the Valley of the Nile were crowded with slaves, many of them 
of Asiatic origin. The elevated plains and mountain sides were 
covered with fierce and intractable nomads, all of Asiatic origin, 
tending their flocks. Some brave and skillful shejaherd organized 
the shepherds and the slaves and at their head swept down upon 
the government with a power that was so mighty as to be irre- 
sistible. Manetho, the great Egyptian historian of more than 
two thousand years ago, thus describes the event: "Under this 
king, then, I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon 
us a baleful wind, and in the face of all probability bands from 
the East, people of ignoble race, came upon us unawares, at- 
tacked the country and subdued it easily and without fighting." 
In remarking upon this same event Professor. Maspero, who stands 
at the very head of the Egyptologists, says: "It is possible that they 
{the shepherds) owed this rapid victory to the presence in their 
armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the Africans — the war 
chariot — and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave 
way in a body." In view of the direct declaration of Manetho 
that the question of the succession was settled "without figlit- 
ing," the mere suggestion of an unsustained "possibility" from 
Maspero that the result may have been determined by the war 
chariots cannot be accepted. All the authorities agree that the 
horse was introduced into Egypt at some period during the rule 
of the Shepherd Kings, but there is absolutely no evidence that 
this was at the beginning or anywhere near the beginning of that 
rule. 

No records or delineations of the horse have been found in any 
of the temples or tombs of Egypt prior to the beginning of the 
■eighteenth dynasty, which was probably about the year 1570 B.C. 



38 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and contemporaneous with the birth of Moses. If the Shepherd 
Kings left behind them any records or delineations of the horse 
it would be quite natural for the true kingly line to destroy and 
erase every vestige of whatever would revive a memory to them so 
bitter and hateful. But the absence of all traces of horses under 
the seventeenth dynasty of the Shepherds does not prove that 
there was none, for we have direct proof in Joseph's case* that 
they were there one hundred and fifty-six years, and in Jacob's 
burial one hundred and nineteen years before the beginning of 
the eighteenth dynasty. 

The question as to the time when they procured their horses 
having now been approximately settled, the inquiry naturally 
follows as to where they came from? In answering this question. 
there seems to be no hesitation or doubt. They came from 
Northern Syria, which embraces not only the northeastern 
coast of the Mediterranean, including Phoenicia, but the countries 
north and east of it trading there, which means the great horse- 
breeding countries of Armenia and Cappadocia. Being largely 
engaged in the Egyptian trade for many centuries, it is probable 
the Phoenician merchants were the principal agents in supplying^ 
them. In speaking of the horse in Egypt, Prof. Masj^ero says: 
"The horse when once introduced into Egypt soon became fairly 
adapted to its environment. It retained both its height and 
size, keeping the convex forehead — which gav3 the head a slightly 
curved profile — the slender neck, the narrow hind -quarters, the 
lean and sinewy legs and the long, flowing tail which had char- 
acterized it in its native country. The climate, however, was 
enervating, and constant care had to be taken, by the introduc- 
tion of new blood from Syria, to prevent the breed from de- 
teriorating. The Pharaohs kept studs of horses in the principal 
cities of the Nile valley, and the great feudal lords, following their 
example, vied with each other in the possession of numerous 
breeding stables." 

There are some facts here that are Avorthy of special emphasis: 
(1) There were no horses in Egypt till the period of the Shepherd 
Kings, i.e., about the time of Joseph. (2) All Egyptologists 
down to the present day agree that the supply of Egyptian horses 
was procured from Northern Syria. (3) The Egyptians and the 
Arabians were adjoining nations in constant, friendly intercourse, 
exchanging the products of their respective countries, and yet 
there is no shadow of an intimation that the Arabians had then. 



EARLY DISTBIBUTIOX OF HORSES. 39 

ever owned a horse. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, not 
only from what is written, but from what is implied, that the 
Arabians at about the period of 1600 B.C. had no horses. North- 
ern Syria, as the source of Egyptian supply, points directly to 
Armenia, adjoining on the east, as the original source. When 
Strabo wrote at the beginning of the Christian era that there 
were no horses in Arabia at that time, he would still have been 
within the bounds of the truth if he had said there had been 
none there for more the sixteen hundred years before his day. 
All these considerations confirm the history that has come down 
to us from Philostorgius. 

As early as the dynasties of the Shepherd Kings and Avhile the 
Israelites were still in Egyptian bondage, the Phoenician mer- 
chants had accumulated great wealth and great poAver and were 
literally the masters of the seas. The Phoenicians were a com- 
mercial and maritime people and the Egyptians were, in fact, de- 
pendent upon them for all their foreign supplies. These condi- 
tions leave hardly a doubt that Egypt's first supply of horses came 
through the Phoenicians. But upon the establishment of the 
eighteenth dynasty under the old Thebans, the spirit of war and 
conquest revived, and under Thutmosis I. and Thutmosis III., 
notably, numerous and successful campaigns were made against 
Northern Syria and then extending eastward across the Euphrates 
into the borders of Armenia and Assyria. And from the number 
of horses and chariots captured in battle and collected as tribute, 
the careful student cannot avoid the conclusion that this kind of 
spoil was the chief incentive to the various campaigns. "Besides 
the usual species," Maspero informs us, "powerful stallions were 
imported from Northern Syria, which were known by the Semitic 
name of Abiri, the strong." This is the first mention in history 
of an improved type of horse noted for his strength. 

Whatever may have been the precise period in which the Patri- 
arch Job lived, he was the author of the grandest panegyric on 
the war-horse that ever was written. Yet it seems strange that 
he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five 
hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred she asses, but did not 
own a horse. To draw his picture of the war-horse he must have 
seen him in action, on the field, and it is not improbable in his 
younger days he witnessed, or possibly participated in, some great 
battle between the Babylonians and the Persians, north of the 
latitude and country in which he lived. It is now generally con- 



40 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ceded, I think, among learned men that the ''land of Uz" was in 
the southeastern portion of Arabia Deserta, bordering on the 
Persian Gulf, where the horse is a useless luxury. Job was a 
very rich man, he certainly did not lack in admiration of the 
horse, and if he had thought that horses wo-,ild add to his comfort 
and enjoyment he could easily have obtained them from the great 
herds in the north. But the camel is the great beast of service 
and utility in Arabia; it was so in Job's time, it is so to-day, and 
it always will be so because it is suited to the environment. 

When Joshua was subduing the tribes of Canaan, B.C. 1450, he 
found that the Phoenicians had several well-fortified cities and 
did not attack them, but he encountered a combination of 
"Northern Kings" with a vast army and ''with horses and chariots 
very many." His victory was complete, and he houghed their 
horses and burned their chariots with fire. 

Jabin, called the King of Canaan, in the time of the Judges, 
had his kingdom on the northern border of Palestine and east of 
Phoenicia, at the southern extension of Mount Lebanon. Sisera, 
one of the greatest commanders of the time, B.C. 1285, com- 
manded his army and he had nine hundred chariots of iron, but 
the victory of the Israelites was complete. 

In the year B.C. 1056, David pursued some of the tribes of 
"Western Arabia that had made a raid on Southern Palestine and 
carried away many captives and much spoil. He overtook them 
with his own followers and subdued them, and none escaped ex- 
cept four iiundred young men who fled on camels. He recovered 
all the captives and brought back all the flocks and herds, but 
there were no horses among them. About the same time, his- 
torians inform us, the tribes of Eastern Arabia were paying their 
tribute to the Assyrians in camels and asses, while the northern 
countries were paying theirs in horses and money. 

The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon B.C. 992, to learn of 
his wisdom and "to prove him with hard questions." Her king- 
dom was in that part of southeastern Arabia now called Yemen, 
bordering on the Red Sea. Her journey was a very long one and 
she "came with a very great train of camels that bare spices and 
very much gold and precious stones." It will be observed that . 
there were no horses in this "very great train." It will be ob- 
served further, from the incidents above related, that whenever 
the Israelites met their neighbors north of them, whether in 
peace or war, they met horses with them; and whenever they met 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 41 

their neighbors south of them, they were mounted only on 
camels. 

When the dominions of Solomon had become vastly extended, 
embracing numbers of tributary kingdoms, as well as nomadic 
tribes, and when his ships had gathered in untold riches from all 
parts of the world, he found it prudent to reorganize his army 
for the defense of his kingdom and his wealth, and on a scale 
commensurate with the dangers that might arise from a combina- 
tion of the jealous and envious neighbors with whom he was sur- 
rounded. Among the northern kingdoms of that day it had been 
often demonstrated in battle that the effective force of an army 
must be estimated by its strength in horsemen and chariots of 
war. Solomon, therefore, bought horses and chariots from Egypt, 
and horses from all lands that had them for sale. It is probable 
that the superiority of the Egyptian chariots was the special 
reason for buying them in that country, as he paid six hundred 
shekels of silver for the chariots and one hundred and fifty for 
the horses to bring them home. The reorganized army consisted 
of one thousand four hundred chariots and twelve thousand horse- 
men, and they were quartered in the different large cities in his 
dominions. In the interval of seven hundred and twenty-eight 
years that had elapsed since Joseph was Prime Minister, and 
horses introduced in Egypt, they had greatly multiplied. When 
Solomon died and his kingdom was divided into two hostile 
camps, Hiram, King of Tyre, his lifelong friend and associate, 
became virtually his successor to the trade of the world. 

The great Greek geographer, Strabo, traveled and wrote in 
the reign of Augustus, and died a.d. 24. For descriptions of all 
countries of that period and their industries and productions, he 
has been quoted for eighteen hundred years as the best if not the 
only authority. Writing as he did, at the very initial point of 
the Cliristian era, he gives us a landmark that fixes itself in the 
mind. He gives a brief, but quite satisfactory, description of 
Arabia, in which he notes the general topography and boundaries 
as they are understood to-day; and then he enters, somcAvhat, 
into the climate, productions of the soil, character and industries 
of the people, etc. Of one part of the country he speaks of the 
inhabitants as breeders of camels, and of another, that is more 
productive, he remarks: "The general fertility of the country is 
very great; among other products there is in particular an 
abundant supply of honey. Except horses, there are numerous 



43 THE HORSE OF AMEEICA. 

herds of animals, asses and swine, birds also of every kind, ex- 
cept geese and the gallinaceous tribes." 

Here we have from the very highest authority the pivotal fact 
that there were no horses in Arabia at the commencement of the 
Christian era. This does not rest upon argument, nor is it a 
deduction from some condition of things that might have existed; 
but it is a distinct declaration of what Strabo saw with his own 
eyes and wrote down when he saw it. It must, therefore, stand 
as an undisputed fact, until some reputable authority is brought 
forward to contradict it. This description from Strabo applies 
to that rich portion of Arabia, bordering on the Red Sea along 
its full length. With the fact established, circumstantially and 
historically, that there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning 
of the Christian era, it now remains to consider how and when 
they were first introduced in that country. 

Philostorgius, a distinguished Greek theologian, born a.d. 425, 
as related in the preceding chapter, wrote an ecclesiastical his- 
tory, which is no longer extant, but fortunately Photius, at one 
time patriarch of the Eastern church, born a.d. 853, prepared an 
epitome of it. This epitome of Philostorgius comes down to 
A.D. 425, and is to be found in the Lenox Library of this city, 
bound up in the same volume with Sozomen's Ecclesiastical 
History. I will here quote literally from this epitome so much 
as is pertinent to the question before us. Constantius was then 
on the throne of the Eastern Empire, and labored for the pro^ 
motion of the Christian religion. 

•' Constantius sent ambassadors to tbose who were formerly called Sabaeans, 
but are now known as Homeritse, » tribe descended from Abraham, by Keturab. 
As to the territory which they inhabit, it is called by the Greeks Magna Arabia 
and Arabia Felix, and extends t> the most distant part of the ocean. Its 
metropolis is Saba, the city from which the Queen of Sheba went forth to see 
Solomon. . . . Constantius, accordingly, sent ambassadors to them to 
come over, to the Christian religion. . . . Constantius, wishing to array 
the embassy with peculiar splendor, put on board their ships two hundred 
well-bred horses from Cappadocia, and sent them, with many other gifts. . 

. The embassy turned out successfully, for the prince of the nation, by 
sincere conviction, came over to the true religion." 

Other facts might be quoted from this epitome, showing that 
Tlieopholis was made a bishop and placed at the head of this em- 
bassy and that he remained in Arabia Felix several years, prose- 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 43 

•cuting his work successfully. It might also be quoted to show 
that the people of the cities of Yemen (Arabia Felix) were, at 
that day, well advanced in civilization and refinement, and that 
wealth and luxury abounded on all sides. Their lands, from the 
sea to the desert, were wonderfully productive, and their people 
lived in the cities and on their farms, but few leading a nomadic 
life. In later generations this part of the country, which is in 
Arabia Felix, has been called Yemen, and I believe it is univer- 
sally conceded among the Arab tribes and by writers who have 
studied the subject that the best horses come from Yemen. 

Taking the administration of Joseph as indicating the time 
when the first horses were introduced into Egypt, about B.C. 
1720, and the actual date when Constantius sent the first into 
Arabia, a.d. 356, we find that Egypt led Arabia by two thousand 
and seventy-six years. And yet numbers of men have written 
great pretentious books on the horse, in which they tell us that 
the Egyptians got their horses from the Arabians; while others 
equally pretentious and voluminous tell us the Arabians got their 
horses from the Egyptians; and neither class probably ever gave 
the labor of an honest hour to settle this question. The one is 
over two thousand years out of the Avay, and still they know just 
as much about it as the other knows. They are both equally 
ignorant and equally dishonest, for they simply copied, as their 
own, what somebody had said before them. 

It is conceded on all hands and by all men who have gone beneath 
the mere surface, that the literature of the ages furnishes no 
evidence that there were horses in Arabia before the fourth or 
fifth century of our era. General Tweedie, by far the ablest 
writer on the Arabian horse that we have examined, concedes 
the pertinency and force of the absence of all literary evidence, 
until the fifth century is reached, and as a reply he says: "The sev- 
eral Roman invasions of Arabia, in the reigns of Augustus, Trajan, 
and Severus, must have left foreign horses behind them." This 
is, in fact, conceding the accuracy of Strabo's representations and 
that there were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the 
Christian era. The truth of the historical allusion is that the 
Romans never overran nor conquered Arabia., They could skir- 
mish around the border and capture a few towns or cities, but 
the death -dealing desert was too much for them. Trajan at last 
made it a Roman province by his proclamation, and not by his 
sword, and for the excellent reason that "the game was not worth 



44 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

the candle." What a strange fact it is that Arabia, instead of 
the first, should have been the last country in all the old world ta 
be supplied with horses! 

It is very difficult to comprehend or even imagine the changes 
that may be wrought in a thousand years by a strong, enterpris- 
ing, and aggressive people, colonized in a rich country occupied 
by semi-barbarians and savages. This was the condition in 
Northern Africa, when the Phoenician colonies were planted 
there, a thousand years before the Christian era. The colony at 
Utica in Algeria was planted about eleven hundred years before 
the Christian era, which was conteraj)oraneous with the reign of 
Saul as king of Israel. The colony of Carthage, that afterward 
contested with Eome for universal dominion, was planted in the 
same country, about two hundred years later, and was contem- 
poraneous with Jehu. The whole southern shore of the Mediter- 
ranean was dotted with Phtenician colonies, from Egypt west- 
ward. 

The oldest of the Phoenician colonies so far from home was 
probably Gades, now called Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast of Spain 
and outside of the Pillars of Hercules. This colony was planted 
about fifteen hundred years B.C. and was contemporaneous with 
Moses and the forty years' journeying of the Israelites in the 
wilderness. The more recent scholarship seems to have de- 
veloped the fact that still north of Gades and extending from 
the mouth of the Guadelete to that of the Guadiana, there was a 
very large and flourishing colony planted by the Phoenicians, 
possessing within itself many of the requisites and functions of 
statehood, and that this was the ancient "Tarshish" of scripture. 
This plantation became a secondary Tyre, and the "ships of Tar- 
shish" not only made their voyages back and forth through the 
length of the Mediterranean, but extended them northward, up 
the European coast and to Britain, and southward along the 
African coast for a great distance, establishing trading j)osts 
wherever the products of a country promised profitable exchange. 

The planting of colonies in that age, even for the one ostensi- 
ble purpose of trade, involved more than the mere erection of a 
"trading post" at some selected harbor. A strong and well- 
equipped and well-trained military force had to be employed to 
protect and defend them. The Phoenicians were great traders, 
and at the same time they were excellent fighters. Their numer- 
ous colonies on both shores of the Mediterranean required a. 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 45 

strong military force that was made up very largely of slaves and 
the nomadic tribes of the country, but always commanded by 
prominent and influential Phoenicians. It is impossible to tell 
what the very early experiences of the colonists may have been 
with regard to horses; nor do we know whether they found horses 
already there when they arrived at their new plantations. My 
belief is, however, that they were not only the first to carry 
horses to Egyj^t, but they were the first to carry them to the 
western extremities of the Mediterranean. It will be remembered 
that the early trade of the Armenians with the Phoenician mer- 
chants was not only in horses, but in horsemen, and it is probable 
that these "horsemen" were slaves, expert and skillful in managing 
t]j/i horse. It has been said by historians that certain classes of 
their ships were ornamented with a carved horse's head, at the 
prow; and it has been inferred that the ships so designated Avere 
specially constructed and fitted up for the safe carrying of horses. 
It is true that in the course of the centuries horses may have 
found their way from Egypt westward to Algeria, and by crossing 
the Bosphorus they might have found their way from Asia 
Minor to Spain, but it is also true that from small beginnings at 
the plantation of the colonies there was ample time for them to 
increase to almost countless herds before the period when the 
colonists became a mighty military power in the earth. 

Historians tell us that the military establishment of the city 
of Carthage alone, when on a peace footing, consisted of three 
hundred elephants, four thousand horses and forty thousand foot 
soldiers. When Hannibal started out to fight Rome, in the second 
Punic war, say e.g. 218, he had with him eighty thousand foot- 
men and twelve thousand horsemen; and he left thirty -two thou- 
sand soldiers at home to guard his Spanish and his African 
dominions. With a proportional division of the home troops, he 
then had about seventeen thousand mounted men in his army. 
These were not war levies, but hardened and trained soldiers, and 
it is, therefore, not remarkable that he held nearly the whole of 
Spain in subjection, and practically all of Northwestern Africa. 
Polybius, the soldier historian, tells us that "his Numidian 
cavalry formed the strongest part of his army, and to their quick 
evolutions, their sudden retreat, and their rapid return to the 
charge, may be attributed the success of Hannibal in his great 
victories." At an earlier period, we learn that in the organiza- 
tion of the Phoenician armies the numerous nomadic tribes were 



46 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

placed on their flanks, and wheeled about on unsaddled horses, 
guided by a bridle of rushes. 

At a very remote period there were two tribes in the interior of 
Spain, the Celtae and Iberi, that were greatly distinguished for 
their love of independence and their bravery in defending it. 
The antiquarians have failed to give us any information as to 
Avhat they were or whence they came. They were contempo- 
raneous with some of the early colonies of the Phoenicians. Their 
tactics in battle seemed to have been to break the enemy's ranks by 
a charge as cavalry, and to then dismount and fight on foot. They 
united as one people and called themselves Celtiberi. Where 
they got their horses, or whether they had them before the 
Phoenicians arrived, are questions that cannot be answered. 

The Visigoths, or western Goths, overran Northern Italy, set- 
tled in Southern France and eventually passed over into Spain, 
where they established a dynasty that lasted over two centuries and 
until it was overthrown by the Saracens, a.d. 711. Roderick, 
the kiiig of the Visigoths, went out to battle with the Saracens, 
arrayed in his most showy apparel, and mounted on his splendid 
chariot, made of ivory and set with precious stones. As the bat- 
tle progressed he saw what he had good reason to believe was 
treachery on the part of one wing of his army and he alighted 
from his chariot, mounted his horse called Orelia and rode away 
while his soldiers were being butchered. He was the last of the 
Gothic dynasty. There had been a battle between the navies of the 
Saracens and the Goths, a.d. 680, fifty-one years earlier, in which 
the fleet of the Saracens had been entirely destroyed, and at that 
time the Saracens occupied the whole of the southern shore of 
the Mediterranean. The word ''Moors," as often used to desig- 
nate the people of Northern Africa, is not well chosen, for it really 
belongs to but one of many different tribes of different names. 
The term "Saracen" anciently meant only an Arab born, but 
since the middle ages it has come to mean any and all adherents 
to the Mohammedan religion, in the usage of Christian people, 
and is particularly apposite when speaking of a number of tribes 
engaged in a common cause. 

The people of Northern Africa were not negroes as we under- 
stand the word, but a mixture of different races. AVhen the 
Phoenicians settled among them they Avere nomadic barbarians, 
possessing a country of great riches without knowing it. Under 
the tuition of their new masters they made great advances ia 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION OF HORSES. 47 

many of the arts of peace and in all the arts of war. The Phoeni- 
cian blood was liberally commingled with that of the natives. 
The blood carried the brains, and hence the beautiful structures 
that came from their hands and heads. No purely bred nomad 
ever could have conceived or constructed the Alhambra. The 
Phoenicians were refined and educated idolaters, as refinement and 
education were understood in their day, while the native people 
were literally barbarians. 

The then recent and rapid spread of Mohammedanism among 
all the people of Northern Africa is, on its surface, one of the 
most remarkable facts in history. As a religion it served to 
unite, under the banner of the Crescent, all who accepted it, and 
guaranteed to all who fell in its defense immediate admission to 
paradise. All who did not accept it were enemies and only fit to 
perish by the sword of the Saracen. The founder of this religion 
died A.D. 632, and seventy -nine years afterward his followers, in 
Northern Africa alone, won their great victory over the Gothic 
dynasty of Spain. When once on Spanish soil they appeared to 
take root there and held possession of a large part of Spain for 
nearly nine hundred years. 

Now that I have traversed the field of Spain and Northern 
Africa, from the first dawnings of history down to the beginning 
of the seventeenth century, in order to gather in all that history 
reveals touching the introduction and propagation of the horse 
in those regions, we are ready to summarize the facts that we 
have gleaned. At the periods of six hundred (when Carthage be- 
came independent of the mother country), four hundred, and 
two hundred years before the Christian' era, there is undoubted 
evidence, over and over again, that Spain and Northern Africa 
were abundantly supplied with horses. Then, how is it possible 
that the hordes of Barbarians from Asia could have supplied these 
countries with horses, Avhen they did not arrive there until 
several centuries after the supply is established to have existed? 
Take, if you please, the shortest of the periods suggested above, 
when Hannibal's cavalry almost annihilated a great Roman army, 
two hundred and sixteen years before the Christian era. This 
was five hundred and seventy-two years before Arabia had any 
horses; and how can "the blind leaders of the blind" supply 
Hannibal's cavalry with Arabian blood? When the people of 
Northern Africa, west of Egypt, fought their way into Spain it is 
not known that there was a single Arabian soldier nor a single 



48 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Arabian horse in the whole armj. They were all called Arabians, 
however, and that pretense has existed ever since. 

The Phoenicians were the most remarkable people of all the 
early ages and indeed of any age. They belonged to the Aramaic 
or Semitic race; they settled in Canaan long before the days of 
Abraham and attained their greatest prosperity in the days of 
Solomon, when his fleets and those of his friend Hiram, King of 
Tyre, controlled and monopolized the commerce of the world. 
More than five hundred years before this alliance, however, they 
had established commercial relations with all the countries bor- 
dering on the Mediterranean, and their ships were trading in the 
ports of every country from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules and 
far beyond. There seems to be no doubt that they carried tin 
from Britain and amber from the Baltic, and, of course, they 
had to bring something to exchange for what they carried away. 
What did they bring? As amber did not enter into the necessary 
arts it is not probable the trade was very large, but tin was re- 
quired by many nations in their everyday life, especially the 
Egyptians, who had no foreign commerce and were thus depend- 
ent upon the Phoenician merchants. "We may conclude, there- 
fore, that the trade in tin was large, and as there was no Phoeni- 
cian colony in extreme southwestern Britain, the foreign traders 
would bring just wliat the Britons most needed. If they were 
already in possession of horses they would not need that kind of 
exchange, but if they were not in possession of liorses, that would 
be just the kind of exchange they would want, and probably this 
was the source from which they obtained their supply. The 
question, however, of how or when our British ancestors obtained 
their first supply of horses has never been positively answered. 
That they had them in great abundance at the beginning of the 
Christian era is fully established by the experience of the Eomans 
when they captured Britain. From their great numbers and the 
skill displayed in their management in battle, it cannot be 
doubted that they were there for many generations before the 
Roman armies came in contact with them. Many theories have 
been advanced as to how the horse may have reached Britain, but 
no one of them rests on so reasonable a basis of probability as 
that of the Phoenician traders. If from this source, which I am 
strongly disposed to believe was the true source, it must have 
been during the maritime supremacy of the Phoenicians and their 
colonies, and this would place the date several centuries before 



EARLY DISTRIBUTION^ OF HORSES. 49 

the Christian era. If we were able to reconstruct the original 
line of the migration of the early English horses, we would, prob- 
ably, first find them in ''the land of Togarmah" starting to 
market at Tyre, where they were exchanged for supplies needed 
in iVrmenia. There they were put on board one of the great 
''ships of Tarshish," and when they next toached the land it was 
at one of the ports at the southwestern portiou of England, where 
they were exchanged for tin and other products of the mines. 

In addition to the argument furnished by this known course of 
trade between nations and peoples, in prehistoric times, we have 
an additional one in the natuivil perpetuation of racial qualities, 
extending through many centuries. In reply to some questions 
submitted to a friend of mine who was born in Western Persia, 
educated in this country, and then returned to the land of his 
nativity, I have replies to my questions bearing date of July, 
1896. He is located at Oroomiah, not far from the modern line 
between Persia and Turkey, and in what may be considered the 
very center of ancient Armenia. He is not skilled in horse lore, 
but he uses horses a great deal and is a very intelligent observer. 
He says that the Persian horses have been greatly overrated and 
that the country is full of very ordinary horses. He says that 
they are all colors, with bays probably predominating. There is 
a great variety of mixed greys, shading into white, and a few that 
are dappled. Then there are chestnuts, sorrels, "mouse-color" 
(duns), and not many blacks. They are small, as a rule, and a 
harness of small size from this country has to be cut down for 
them. From this I infer that they are generally under fourteen 
hands. On the whole the horses are nicely shaped, have slender, 
clean limbs, small ears, and carry the head and tail well up. As a 
rule they are great stumblers. With regard to gaits he says that 
stress is laid on a rapid walk — a half walk and half trot. In this 
country we would call it the "running walk" that may be kept 
up for days in succession. In speaking of the pace, my corre- 
spondent says: "There are some horses trained to pace, while 
some pick it up naturally, that is, are born pacers. The greater 
number are natural pacers. Now and then one will find a rapid 
pacer, but commonly the pace is a five or six miles an hour gait. 
There are some that single-foot naturally, and from birth." 

He then says horses are not bred with any care. They are turned 
loose in herds and the breeding is such as would naturally occur. 

It will be observed that my Persian friend speaks of the differ- 



50 THE HORSE OP AMERICA. 

ent colors "of grey, shading into white," which suggests a possi- 
ble descent from the famous breed of white Nissaan horses kept 
by the great Darius and other Medo-Persian monarchs for racing 
purposes. But the striking feature in this description of the 
horses of Persia, or more properly, of ancient Armenia, of this 
day, is the fact that they are of the same size and colpr and 
habits of action as the horses of Britain when first visited by the 
Eomans, as well as when they were more minutely described 
twelve hundred years later, and as they were at the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, and as they still were at the middle of 
the eighteenth century. As evidence on these points reference 
is made to the chapters on horses of the colonial period that will 
follow in their place. In ancient Armenia, as with all pastoral 
people of the early ages, horses were turned out to run in herds 
and literally left to Mr, Darwin's law of "natural selection and 
the survival of the fittest." So it was in Britain to a great ex- 
tent, until the eighteenth century, and so it was in the American 
colonies until fifty years later; hence the same types and charac- 
teristics prevailed and were perpetuated in all these countries. 

It is sad to contemplate the present debased and semi-barbarous 
condition of the descendants of a great people who for centuries " 
stood first among all the nations of the earth in commercial en- 
terprise, in learning, and in the arts. The banishment of the 
Saracens from Spain in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
of our era was in fact the banishment of the descendants of the 
Phoenicians who first colonized Spain. The architectural struc- 
tures which they left behind them, and which for their marvelous 
beauty have challenged the admiration of the world, were not 
the work of nomads and barbarians. They were the flashes of 
the old PhcBnician taste and genius as exemplified by the de- 
scendants of the men whom Hiram sent to construct and decorate 
the buildings of Solomon. The Alhambra and some other struc- 
tures in Spain are all that we have to remind us of the genius 
and grandeur of Phoenicia. Whatever may have been the char- 
acter and attainments of the descendants of the colonists at the 
time, the change from idolatry to Islamism was a bad one. 
Wherever, throughout the world, the teachings of the "Prophet" 
have been accepted, whole nations have become intolerant, mur- 
derous and brutalized, and the modern Phoenicians are no excep- 
tion. They have now lost their identity in the follies and crimes, 
of Islamism and we can have no sympathy for them. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ARABIATf HORSE. 

The Arabian, the horse of romance — The horse naturally foreign to Arabia — 
Superiority of the camel for all Arabian needs — Scarcity of horses in Arabia 
in Mohammed's time — Various preposterous traditions of Arab horseman- 
ship — The Prophet's mythical mares — Mohammed not in any sense a 
horseman — Early English Arabians — the Markham Arabian — The alleged 
Royal Mares — The Darley Arabian — The Godolphin Aral)ian — The Prince 
of Wales' Arabian race horses — Mr. Blunt's pilgrimage to the Euphrates — 
His purchases of so-called Arabians — Deyr as a great horse market where 
everything is thoroughbred — Failure of Mr. Blunt's experiments — Various 
Arabian horses brought to America — Horses sent to our Presidents — Dis- 
astrous experiments of A. Keene Richards — Tendency of Arab romancing 
from Ben Hur. 

Admiration always leads to exaggeration. This is true in 
most of the relations of life, but in our admiration of the horse it 
becomes greatly intensified, so greatly indeed that in magnifying 
his excellent qualities we find ourselves telling downright false- 
hoods about him before we know it. This "amiable weakness," 
as we might call it, is true of our everyday life and our everyday 
horses; but when we come to the horse that is the universal ideal 
of perfection, everybody seems to lay aside all the restraints of 
truth in extolling the superiority of his qualities. The "Arabian 
horse" is the ideal horse of all the world. He is the "gold 
standard" in all horsedom, with the one important distinction 
that the one is real and the other is mythical. Not one so-called 
horseman in a million ever saw a genuine Arabian horse, nor any 
of the descendants of one; and in all the discussions of the past 
three hundred and fifty years it has never been shown in a single 
instance that a horse from Arabia, with an authenticated pedi- 
gree and tracing as such, has ever been of any value, either as a 
race horse or as a progenitor of race horses. The superior quali- 
ties of "the Arabian horse," like the superior qualities of "The 
Arabian Nights," are purely works of the imagination. There 
is just as much truth in the stories of Sindbad the Sailor and 



ii2 THE HOKSE OF AMEUICA. 

Aladdin's Lamp as there is in most of the literature relating to 
the Arabian liorse. 

I am fully satisfied that these views of the Arabian horse will 
not meet with a ready acceptance by the vast majority of tli& 
horsemen of this or atiy other country, but my reasons for pre- 
senting them will become apparent as the discussion progresses. 
They sjnash too many idols and dispel too many chimeras'of the 
brain to be readily accepted. It takes the average man a long 
time to get clear of the prejudices in which he was born, and the 
first question that will be asked by the doubter is, "Why could 
not Arabia have supported a race of indigenous wild horses, as 
well as any other country?" Because the horse, wild or tame, 
has never learned to dig a well forty feet deep, nor to draw water 
after it is dug. Neither has he learned to lay up a store in time 
of plenty against a time of famine. The horse could not live in 
Arabia without the care of man. And, second, "Why were all the 
civilized and semi-civilized 7iations west of Asia supplied with 
horses a thousand years before Arabia, when so near the original 
habitat of the horse?" It is the first law of our nature to supply 
ourselves with what we need. The camel always has been a 
necessity to the Arab, not only to carry him and his burdens, but 
to furnish nourishment and sustenance to him and his family. 
The camel is adapted to the country and the country to the 
camel, and no other created animal can fill that place. He is, 
literally, "the ship of the desert." The horse in Arabia is a 
luxury that can be indulged in only by the rich; hence his owner- 
ship is practically restricted to the chiefs of tribes. He is never 
used except for display and war. Palgrave, in speaking specially 
of the Nejd tribe, says: "A horse is by no means an article of 
everyday possession, or of ordinary or working use. No genuine 
Arab would ever dream of mounting his horse for a mere peace- 
ful journey, whether for a short or a long distance." 

When we consider the immeasurable superiority of the camel 
to the horse in meeting the wants and necessities of the Arab, 
we will not be surprised at the immense herds of the former and 
the small numbers of the latter that are bred and reared in that 
country. A camel can go four days without water, and under 
stress, it is said, a good one can cover the distance of two hun- 
dred miles in twenty-four hours. The camel and the country 
are suited to each other, while the horse is an exotic, and has no 
part in any industrial interest except raiding and robbery. My 



THE ARABIAN" HORSE. 53 

attention was first called to this unexpected smallness in the 
numbers of Arabian horses in the seventh century, two hundred 
and sixty years after the introduction of the original stock from 
Cappadocia. The flight of Mohammed from his enemies in 
Mecca to Medina took place a.d. 622. There, setting up as a 
Prophet, and as holding communications with Heaven, he soon 
gathered around him a number who believed in his divine in- 
spiration. Understanding the habits and instincts of his follow- 
ers, he soon found he must give them something to do. He 
called them about him, mounted a camel, and at their head he 
was successful in plundering two or three caravans, which greatly 
enraged his old enemies at Mecca. Whether the anger of his 
enemies was kindled anew because some of the plunder belonged 
in Mecca, or whether he merely deprived- the Meccans of the op- 
portunity of doing the plundering themselves, the historian fails 
to make clear. Whichever may have been the underlying reason, 
it led to war. In the first campaign of the Meccans and in the 
first battle fought, they far outnumbered the followers of the 
Prophet. There were some camels in Mohammed's train, but no 
horses. He did not lead the battle himself, but remained in his 
tent and promised .his followers that all who fell in battle would 
be forthwith admitted into Paradise. They believed the promise, 
as millions and millions have believed it since; it inspired them 
with a recklessness of life, and they were completely victorious. 
The result of this victory was the capture of one hundred and 
fifteen camels and fourteen horses, besides the entire camp of the 
enemy. In the battle of the next year (a. d. 625) between the 
same parties, the forces were much increased on both sides. Sir 
William Muir, the historian, informs us that Mohammed had but 
two horses in his army, one of which he mounted himself and 
took command of his forces. This battle was not decisive. In 
subsequent raids he captured many enemies and traded his female 
captives for horses with the surrounding tribes, so far as he was 
able to obtain them. The next year he had an army of three 
thousand men and thirty-six horses, while the enemy had an 
army of three thousand men, of whom two hundred were cavalry, 
but there was no fighting. The fame of Mohammed as a suc- 
cessful and relentless pillager and destroyer had now spread far 
and wide, and as a means of escape the chiefs of the larger por- 
tion of the tribes of Arabia hastened to tender their allegiance 
and obey his commands. Prom this forward, therefore, we must 



54 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

consider Mohammed as the representative of the whole of Arabia, 
in both its religious and military power. The next year his old 
enemies, the citizens of Mecca, surrendered the sacred city to 
him without a blow, and thus Islam ism became a mighty power 
in the world. 

It is evident from many sources other than the history of 
Mohammed that horses have always been a very sparse produc- 
tion in Arabia. Burckhardt, the famous traveler in the East, 
journeyed very extensively in Arabia about 1814, and he gives 
the result of his observations on this point of numbers as follows: 
"In all the journey from Mecca to Medina, between the moun- 
tains and the sea, a distance of at least two hundred and sixty 
miles, I do not believe that two hundred horses could be found, 
and the same proportion of numbers may be remarked all along 
the Red Sea." This is in strict conformity with the observations 
of other writers, the reasons for which have already been given. 

Time out of mind, everybody has heard of the insuperable 
difficulty of prevailing upon an Arab to part with his genuine, 
high-caste mare for either love or money. He will exjsatiate, as 
the story goes, upon "the beauty and graces of his mare as the 
light of his household and the joy and playmate of his children, 
and above all as she is royally bred he cannot, as a good Moslem, 
disobey the injunctions of the Prophet not to sell such mares, but 
to keep them forever that their descendants may enrich the 
children of the faithful to all generations." If you ask him 
more particularly about her lines of descent, he will give you fifty 
or a hundred generations and land you safely on the name of the 
particular one of the five mares of the Prophet from which she is 
descended. To illustrate the sham of all this Major Upton's ex- 
perience, in purchasing horses in Arabia for the East India 
service, may be cited. It is evident the major understands his 
dealers and they understand him. He says: "In the desert we 
never heard of Mohammed's mares, nor was his name ever men- 
tioned in any way as connected with the Arabian horse." He 
says there is no restriction nor difficulty in buying as many mares 
as you want, in any part of Arabia. This disposes of the tricky 
pretenses of the Arab horse dealer when he is negotiating a sale 
to a man without Arabian experience. 

Some modern writers make mention of a tradition that still 
prevails among some tribes as to the origin of the Arabian horse, 
and it is to the effect that their best horses came originally from 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. 55 

Yemen. This tradition is met with in Arabia Deserta, a long 
"way from Arabia Felix, of which Yemen is a portion. While 
this tradition is of no possible value as evidence, it is suggestive 
of what might be unearthed in that strange country. The people 
were not nomadic, but agricultural and commercial, and the cities 
were rich. The people were well advanced in the arts and com- 
forts of civilized life, and in their cities they had many beautiful 
temples and palaces. Such a people would of necessity produce 
learned men who would leave records of their national history 
behind them, and especially that of such an event as the conver- 
sion of the whole people to Christianity. Possibly the researches 
of scholarly men may yet bring to light more of the facts con- 
nected with the embassy from the Emperor Constantius and 
the introduction of the Oappadocian horses into Yemen, as re- 
lated in the preceding chapters. 

There are many other traditions, so called, that are burnished 
up and brought out whenever the crafty dealer finds he has a 
Richards from America, or a Blunt from England, Avith his mind 
already made up that all the best horses of the world have come 
from Arabia. To such a customer, with his mind already at high 
tension in search for the longest pedigree and the purest blood, 
the dealer casts his hook in something like the form following: 

"When King Solomon had completed the temple he turned his 
attention to supplying his army with horses and chariots. He 
searched every nation that had horses for sale and would have 
none but the very best that the Avorld could produce. He spent 
much of his time in admiring his beautiful horses, and one day 
he Avas so thoroughly absorbed that the hour of prayer passed 
Avithout his observing it. He felt that this neglect to pray at the 
proper time Avas a great sin, and that his horses had led him into 
it. He did not hesitate longer, but he at once ordered all his 
horses to be turned loose to the public. Some of my ancestors 
succeeded in securing six of these mares, and from these six 
mares all the good horses of Arabia are descended." 

Other dealers are a little more modest in their claims for the 
antiquity of the pedigrees of their horses, and generously knock 
off about sixteen hundred years, being content to trace to the 
mares of the Prophet instead of the mares of Solomon. This 
still leaves them with a pedigree only about twelve hundred years 
long, which beats our modern romancers in making stud books. 
In order to test and select the mares that were worthy of becom- 



56 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ing the dams of the best horses, as the story goes, the Prophet 
shut up a herd of mares, in plain sight of water, and kept them 
there till they were almost famisiied with thirst; and then at a 
signal they were all released at once, and when rushing headlong 
to the water the trumpet sounds, and notwithstanding their 
sufferings they turn and align themselves up in military' order. 
In this test of obedience and discipline, it is said, only five of the 
mares obeyed the signal (some say only three) and thus the mares 
that obeyed, notwithstanding their sufferings, became justly en- 
titled to the distinctive and honored name of "The Prophet's 
Mares." Another story is told of the particular markings which, 
in the Prophet's estimation, indicated the best horses. By one 
authority he always selected a black horse with a white "fore- 
head," and some white mark or marks on his upper lip. An- 
other authority says he always chose a bay horse with a bald face 
and four white legs, and so we might go on till we had embraced 
every color and every combination of marks, and we would then 
find that each "authority" had a horse to sell corresponding with 
the Prophet's preferences. Now the fact is that Mohammed was 
neither a horseman nor a horse breeder, and the whole tenor of 
history goes to show that he neither knew nor cared very much 
about horses. In his first pilgrimage to Mecca, after the battles 
referred to above, the privilege for which was secured by negotia- 
tion, a hundred horsemen, it is said, were started and kept one 
day's journey in advance of the main body of pilgrims. The 
great numbers following Mohammed on this pilgrimage admon- 
ished his old enemies of Mecca of the futility of attempting to 
resist his power longer, and they fled from the city during the 
continuance of the ceremonies, A year or two later he sum- 
moned all the tribes of Northern and Eastern Arabia to follow him 
again to Mecca, and they had too lively a sense of their own safety 
to disobey. Due time was given for preparation, the rendezvous 
was at Medina, and a vast host from all Northern and Western 
Arabia congregated there for a purpose that might be to fight, 
or it might be to pray. Mohammed mounted his camel and the 
word was passed, "On to Mecca. " As against such a multitude 
the Meccans saw that resistance was hopeless, and the city was 
surredenred without either side striking a blow. Arrayed in great 
splendor and mounted on his camel, the Prophet made the req- 
uisite number of circuits round the holy place and then entered 
and ordered, all the idols -that had been set up there to be de- 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. 57 

:stroyed, and his followers then shouted, "Allah is Allah, and 
Mohammed is his Prophet!" Tlius he became master of all 
Arabia — and woe to the Christian or the Jew who stood in his 
way. Two years afterward he died, and there is nothing in his 
life or history to indicate that he ever owned a horse or that he 
ever mounted one, except on a single occasion. In the ten short 
years of his public life he had something more important on hand 
than to determine how to breed horses. 

In studying the Arabian horse in the light of what he has done 
and what he has failed to do, we are indebted to English writers 
for little snatches of experiences extending back for a period of 
about two hundred and fifty years. The earliest English writer 
who has had anything to say about the Arabian horse was the 
Duke of Newcastle, who seems to have known a great deal about 
the various types and breeds of horses of his day. During the 
period of the Commonwealth it appears he devoted his time, in 
the Netherlands, to training horses in the manege of that day. 
Erom his experience in this employment he became an expert in 
the form, structure, and docility of the different kinds of horses 
that he handled. When Charles II. was brought back and placed 
upon the throne, the duke also came to his own, and being a 
personal friend of the king he became his counselor and adviser 
in all matters relating to the improvement of the horses of the 
realm. In 1667 the duke published his famous book upon the 
horse, in which he speaks right out on any and every question that 
he touches. There can be no doubt that he knew more about 
horses and horse history than any man of his day. In speaking 
of the Arabian horse he says: "I never saw but one of these 
horses, which Mr. John Markham, a merchant, brought over, and 
said he was a right Arabian. He was a bay, but a little horse, 
and no rarity for shape, for I have seen many English horses far 
finer. Mr. Markham sold him to King James for five hundred 
pounds, and being trained up for a course (race), when he came 
to run every horse beat him." 

It is generally held that this Markham Arabian was the first of 
that breed ever brought to England, and this seems to be estab- 
lished by the fact that historians antedating his arrival make no 
mention of any Arabian horse before this one, and those follow- 
ing always speak of this horse as the first. In speaking of the 
jjowers of endurance of the Arabian horse, the duke says: "They 
talk they will ride fourscore miles in a day and never draw the 



58 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

bridle. When I was young I could have bought a nag for ten 
pounds that would have done as much very easily." The duke's 
masterful knowledge of the subject, as well as his special official 
relations to the king, gave him control of whatever was done or 
attempted in the direction of improving the racing stock of Eng- 
land. Tradition informs us that "King Charles II. sent abroad 
the master of the horse to procure a number of foreign horses 
and mares for breeding, and the mares brought over by him (as also 
many of their produce) have since been called Royal Mares." 
It is very doubtful whether any such importation was ever made. 
The question has been discussed, from time to time and even 
recently, but nobody has ever yet discovered who was "Master of 
the Horse," to what country he was sent or what the character of 
the mares he brought home, or where he got them. The fair 
presumption is that these "Eoyal Mares" were myths and that 
they were created merely for the purpose of putting a finish on 
certain very uncertii,iu pedigrees, just as a trotting-horse man 
would finish a pedigree that he knew nothing about by saying, 
"out of a thoroughbred mare." As a matter of course it has 
always been assumed that these "Royal Mares" were of distinc- 
tively pure Arabian blood. But, if we admit that such an im- 
portation was really made, Ave must consider that it was made 
under the direction and control of the Duke of Newcastle, the 
king's mentor in all horse affairs, and this is sufficient proof that 
there was no Arabian blood about the "Royal Mares." As the 
size of the English race horse and especially his weight of bone 
commenced to increase soon after this time, it strikes me as 
probable that this was tlie wise and guiding motive of the duke in 
making his selections of the "Royal Mares." 

When we come down a little nearer to our own times and step 
across the border from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, 
we are still in the realm of traditions, and many of them very 
preposterous. The deceptions practiced in nomenclature were so 
common as to be well-nigh universal. Everybody who owned a 
foreign horse must have "Arabian" attached to his name. To> 
illustrate this evil and the misleading effects flowing from it, I 
will give two instances of the most famous horses in all English 
history. The Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian stand 
pre-eminent and before all others as progenitors of the English 
race horse. The former of these two was purchased at Aleppo, 
in Asia Minor, and brought]to England in 1711, by Mr. Darley of 



THE ARABIAN- HORSE. 59 

Yorkshire who secured him through a brother in trade in that 
region. He was the sire of Flying Childers and many others, 
and his blood carried from generation to generation. Aleppo is 
in Northern Syria and far distant from Arabia. At one time it 
was embraced in Armenia Minor, the original home of the horse, 
and adjoined Cappadocia and Cilicia, all famous for the excel- 
lence of their horse stock more than two thousand years before 
there was a single horse in Arabia. Upon the restoration of the 
ancient Theban line of Pharaohs in Egypt, at the beginning of 
the eighteenth dynasty, no time was lost by Thutmosis I. in lead- 
ing a, great army into Northern Syria for no other purpose that is 
apparent except to replenish and reinvigorate the horse stock of 
Egypt, from the region of Aleppo and further east, for this is 
the region from which they had secured their original stock. 
His successors pursued the same course, year after year, and the 
number of horses and chariots captured in battle, as well as the 
number of mares sent as tribute by the frightened people, were 
duly recorded in the annals of their achievements. If the 
Darley Arabian, so called, bore any relationship whatever to the 
Arabian horse, it can only be established by tracing him back to 
some one of the animals in Cappadocia that the Emperor Con- 
stantius sent to Arabia in the year a.d. 35G. A writer of the 
seventeenth century. Dr. Alexander Bursell, in speaking of Aleppo, 
says: "Formerly this part of the country was famous for line 
horses; and though many good ones are still bred here, it may 
be said they are much degenerated." This is the observation of 
an intelligent man, written and published in 1750, about forty 
years after Mr. Barley's horse was brought from there. 

The other illustration is that of Godolphin Arabian. As a pro- 
genitor of race horses this was the greatest horse of his century, or 
indeed of any other century in the history of the English, race 
horse. He died in 1753, and absolutely nothing is known of his 
origin or his early history. The story is generally accepted, and 
I suppose is true, that he was bought out of a cart in Paris, as an 
act of humanity, by a Mr. Coke, taken to London, presented to 
Mr. Williams, the keeper of a coffee-house, and passed from him 
to Lord Godolphin, who kept him till he died. The story that 
he was presented to Louis XV. by the Bey of Tunis in 1731 has 
never been verified in any manner, and breaks down on the vital 
point of date. Some intelligent Englishmen insist that he must 
have been an Arabian, while others insist that he mtist have been a 



60 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Barb, while no man hnoivs whether he was either one or the 
other. With the most prominent horses of the nation and of 
their century thus used to mislead the public mind as to their 
lineage, what are we to expect from the great ruck of the obscure 
and less prominent? But, as a more elaborate and methodical 
discussion of this topic will be found in the chapter On the Eng- 
lish and American Eace Horse, we will now turn our attention to 
the actual experiences with the Arabians in recent times. 

When we come down to the present century we get into the 
era of newspapers that really begun to give the news, and thus 
educate their readers, not very authentically, but circumstantially, 
in what was passing in the world in every department of knowl- 
edge and enterprise. Under these wide sources of information, a 
few authentic experiences will serve to illustrate the true status 
of the Arabian horse and his influence, or lack of influence, on 
English and American horses. More than twenty years ago the 
Prince of Wales made a royal progress through Her Majesty's 
dominions in the East. The enthusiasm was unbounded and he 
was loaded down with many valuable presents, among them 
several elegant, high-caste Arabian horses. It appears that some 
of these horses had already won reputation and money on the 
turf, and were considered the very best that could be found in 
the East. On their arrival they were greatly admired and praised, 
especially by the sporting friends of the prince, who seemed to 
have no doubt, nor did they conceal their opinions, that they 
could beat any horses in all England. This was a conclusion 
that a great many racing men, with longer memories, could not 
accept, and after a good deal of diplomacy a match was finally 
concluded between the prince's best horse and an old horse that 
was third or fourth-class, in his prime, but was unsound and 
liable to break down any time he was extended. The prince was 
popular, had many supporters, and much money was pending. 
The old horse was patched up as well as possible, the day came, 
the race was started, and the old cripple was so much faster than 
the Arab that his managers had the hardest work in the world to 
prevent him from running clear away and disgracing the prince. 
This account of the race I had from one of the most eminent and 
successful tuainers that England has produced. He witnessed 
the race and knew all the facts concerning it. Notwithstanding 
the popularity of the prince and the universal feeling of loyalty 
toward him, it was a long time before his Arabs ceased to be a 
laughing-stock among horsemen. 



THE AKABIA]Sr HOESE. 61 

Some sixteen or eighteen years ago, an English gentleman of 
wealth and intelligence — Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt — got it into his 
head that the way to improve the English race horse was to se- 
cure fresh infusions of pure Arabian blood. He was industrious 
in propagating his fad, in an amateurish way, through the columns 
of the English newspapers, evincing great zeal and a great lack of 
knowledge of the hundreds of experiments in the same direction 
and in the history of his own country that had proved disastrous. 
But he had a will of his own and a bank account that enabled him 
to carry out his views to their own realization. In the autumn of 
1877 he made up a pleasant family party, consisting of his wife. 
Lady Anne, and two of her lady friends and started for Arabia, with 
the full determination to find the best and to buy nothing that 
was not of the purest and best lineage that could be found in all 
that country. Fortunately, Lady Anne carefully noted down 
everything that transpired in their journeyings and after the re- 
turn wrote a very pleasant and readable book, understood to have 
been edited by her husband in some of its features. The title 
of the book — "The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates" — did not 
strike me pleasantly, for I never knew that any of the numerous 
Bedouin tribes were to be found on the Euphrates. But my 
purpose is not to criticise either the book or its title, but to fol- 
low the party over its itinerary and discover just where Mr. Blunt 
found the blood he was looking for, and upon what evidence he 
accepted it as "the best blood." With this view I will carefully 
give his own language, so far as it applies to the point in view. 

His first purchase was at Aleppo, where he got a mare he 
named Hagar, as he says, "for a very moderate sum." "She was 
of the Kehilan-AJuz breed." "When purchased she was in very 
poor condition, having just gone through the severe training of a 
campaign." "She was bred by the Gommussa, the most able of 
the horse-breedmg tribes, had passed from them to the Roala, 
and had now been captured and ridd§n some two hundred miles, 
in hot haste, for sale to Aleppo." "We never met anything in 
our travels that could compete with her over a distance, and she 
has often run down foxes and even hares, without assistance, 
carrying thirteen stone on her back." This was the first experi- 
ence of the English "tenderfoot" among Syrian horsethieves. 
According to his own showing, he bought her from the fellow 
who had stolen her and had ridden her two hundred miles to 
escape, and he accepted what the thief told about the breeding of 



62 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

the mare as true. The thief knew just what Mr. Blunt wanted 
and he shaped the pedigree and tracing to suit the purchaser. 
Mr. Blunt had no knowledge of this mare's breeding, nor where 
she 'came from; still, her blood was to become one of the great 
influences in renovating the English race horse. This incident is 
of no importance, in itself, except as it illustrates the universal 
conditions under which amateurs buy horses in the Orient. 

Upon leaving Aleppo, the party traveled eastward till they 
struck the Euphrates and then down the right bank of that river. 
The first town of any importance was Deyr, on the river, and just 
across was ancient Mesopotamia. They were still in the border 
land between the productive north and the desert south, with 
the Syrian desert between them and the Arabian desert. All 
this region is occupied with a mixture of races, employed in 
varied pursuits, with but a feeble trace of tribal authority, as all 
are under the direct government of the Sultan of Turkey. 

" Deyr is well-known," Mr Blunt says, " as a horse market, and is, perhaps, 
the only town north of the Jebel Shamuiar where the inhabitants have any 
general knowledge of the blood and breeding of the beasts they possess. The 
townsmen, indeed, are but a single step removed from the Bedouins, their un- 
doubted ancestors. They usually purchase t eir colts as yearlings either from 
the Gomussa, or some of the Sabaa tribes, and having broken them thoroughly, 
sell tbem at three years old to the Aleppo merchants. They occasionally, too, 
have mares left with them, in partnership, by the Anazah, and from these they 
breed according to the strictest desert rules. It is, therefore, for a stranger, 
by far the best market for thoroughbreds in Asia, and you may get some of 
the best blood at Deyr that can be found anywhere, besides having a 
guarantee of its authenticity, impossible, under ordinary circumstances, to get 
at Damascus or Aleppo. There are, I may say, no horses at Deyr but thorough- 
breds " 

He made some purchases at Deyr and then they pursued their 
journey down the river, and at the most convenient point he 
crossed over to Bagdad, on the Tigris. Here he inspected the stud 
of the Turkish pasha, but the prices were high and he seemed to 
lack confidence in the purity of their breeding. Whatever the 
cause, he made no purchases, and soon started on his journey 
up the Tigris. Upon reaching Sherghat on the Tigris, he turned 
westward, and crossing ancient Mesopotamia, he was again at 
Deyr, where he seems to have made more purchases, and then 
started, in a southwesterly direction, with eighteen mares and two 
stallions for Damascus and the coast. This closed the search of 
Arabia for Arabian horses of the highest caste and purest blood. 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. 63 

without really being in Arabia, and this is all that can be said of 
"The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates" — without having seen a 
real Bedouin. 

No doubt Mr, Blunt thinks he is right in his high appreciation 
of the town of Deyr as a horse market; that it is "the best 
market for thoroughbreds in Asia;" and that "there are no 
horses in Deyr but thoroughbreds/' or he would not have bought 
his horses there. Dealing in horses seems to be the principal 
business of the people, they are all well informed on the best and 
purest strains of blood, according to Mr. Blunt, and all their own 
horses are thoroughbred. Truly an ideal market, an ideal people, 
and ideal horses, just suited to the needs of enthusiastic amateurs 
like Mr. Blunt. This remarkable horse town is located on the 
border between the rich grain fields and luxuriant meadows on the 
north, and the comparatively barren deserts of the south. On 
the north the country has been famous for thousands of years for 
the great numbers and excellence of the horses produced, and 
they are still produced of excellent form and quality, and are sold 
at very low prices. On the south is the land of the camel, and 
but few horses and those few held at high prices, and the simple 
term "Arabian horse" always brings them purchasers. Here, 
then, we find that Deyr is the very paradise of horse traders — a 
tribe, wherever we find them on the face of the earth, distin- 
guished for elasticity of conscience. The north furnishes the 
horses and the south furnishes the pedigrees, and no wonder the 
Deyrites had nothing but "thoroughbreds" when Mr. Blunt came 
along. In the I'ne of their business and from their southern 
neighbors, they had picked up enough "Arabian horse talk" to 
satisfy all inexperienced buyers that they knew all about the value 
of the different strains of Arabian blood, and could supply them 
from their own studs, ac very reasonable prices. And thus Mr. 
Blunt brought home to England eighteen "Arabian" mares and 
two stallions, without any satisfactory evidence that they ever 
had seen Arabia. In this enthusiastic venture, resulting in utter 
failure, there is one alleviating fact that Mr. Blunt can call to 
mind, and that is that his horses were just as good for the pur- 
pose of improving the English race horse as any others that 
have been brought from the Orient in the past hundred years. 
Whatever their blood, whether genuine or counterfeit Arabians, 
they have all alike been failures, and all alike good for nothing. 

Early in the history of our own government it became not an 



64 THE HORSE OF AMERICA^ 

unusual thing for the Sultan of Turkey, the Emperor of Morocco, 
or some other potentate of the Saracenic races, to present to the 
President two horses, and as they were presents from royalty to 
what they esteemed royalty, they were necessarily of the highest 
caste and of the greatest value of any. horses in all their domin- 
ions. It is probable that Mr. Jefferson was the first president to 
receive these royal gifts, and under the requirements of the con- 
stitution and without any disrespect to the donor, he ordered 
them to be sold to the highest bidder, and turned the money into 
the treasury. Several of the presidents received these presents 
of horses, and without knowing the fact, I will presume disposed 
of them the same way. In the case of President Lincoln, Mr. 
Seward seemed to be more highly favored and the sultan sent^ 
the horses to him. Through the State Agricultural Society, Mr. 
Seward presented his royal presents to the State of New York. 
My recollection is not very distinct, but my impression is that 
Mr. Van Buren had disposed of his in the same way. When 
General Grant received his, he was not in public office and hence 
they became bis personal property. A number of the first of 
these importations, together with some others that were brought 
from Arabia, individually and by private persons, were, in the 
early part of the century, carried into the South, which was then 
the "race-horse region," but the breeders there very soon dis- 
covered that in breeding from them they were taking a backward 
instead of a forward step. Their progeny could neither run nor 
trot, and as they were too small for the ordinary uses of the 
farmer and planter, they were almost unanimously rejected, with 
nothing left but the ignorant "fad" that was embodied in the^ 
name "Arabian." 

The most notable example of the folly of attempting to re- 
generate the American race horse by the introduction of the 
"blood of the desert" is furnished in the sad experience of the 
late A. Keene Eichards, of Kentucky. He inherited a large 
estate, and when he came into possession he proved himself an 
intelligent and successful breeder, and ran the colts of his own 
breeding, with a full share of winnings. He was not a spendthrift 
nor a gambler, but he was not content with mediocrity in shar- 
ing triumphs with his neighbors, for he was ambitious to beat 
them all. He soon had his head full of such horses as the Darley 
Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, and he argued if that blood 
founded the English race horse, he would go to Arabia and get it 



THE ARABIAN HORSE. tio 

and it could not fail to regenerate the American race horse. He 
did not stop to inquire whether either of his great ideals might 
have had a drop of Arabian blood in his veins, but he started for 
Arabia at once. He brought home a few stallions and felt sure 
he was on the eve of the greatest triumph of his life. When the 
half- Arab produce of his strong and elegantly bred race mares 
were old enough to run the jockey club allowed the half-breeds 
seven pounds the advantage in weight and they were beaten. 
The club then allowed them fourteen pounds and they were 
again beaten; and finally the allowance was raised to twenty-one 
pounds, and they were still in the rear rank. Under these hu- 
miliating defeats a careful man would have hesitated before he 
went further, but he at once jumped to the conclusion that his 
defeat was not in the fact that Arab blood could not run fast 
enough to win, but in the fact, as he supposed, that the rascally 
Arabs had sold him blood that was not Arab blood. In a short 
time he was off for Arabia again, taking with him as companion 
and adviser the distinguished animal painter, Troye, who had a 
long and successful experience as a delineator of race horses and 
knew all about the anatomy of the horse. They spent several 
months among the dilferent tribes, and in order to get "inside of 
the ring," as it were, they ate with the Arabs, slept with the 
Arabs, and worshiped with the Arabs, as Mr. Eichards told me 
himself. They came home full of the highest expectations, bring- 
ing several mares as well as stallions Avith them, and fully assured 
that every one was of the highest caste and the best form for rac- 
ing that could be found on all the plains of the desert. After 
the foals of this importation were old enough to start in the 
stakes, they were given the same advantages in weight as before, 
and they proved no better than the first lot. Poor Mr. Eichards 
was crushed in spirits, not only by the vanishing of his air castles, 
but by the importunacy of his creditors. In his heroic, but mis- 
guided, efforts to improve the American race horse by infusions 
of pure Arabian blood, he involved his once handsome estate, 
and he died hopelessly insolvent. He had bred a number of pure 
Arabs of several generations, but the abundant feed and luxuriant 
blue grass of Kentucky did not increase their size, for when they 
came under the auctioneer's hammer they were but little 
"tackeys," and they brought only the price of little "tackeys." 

The number of horses brought to this country, whether as 
gifts to statesmen or as private ventures, and called "Arabians," 



66 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

is not very large, and it is safe to say that not one in ten of them 
ever saw Arabia. They came from Turkey or some of the Bar- 
bary States. But in the case of Mr. Eichards there can be no 
doubt that he made his selections in Arabia itself. Those selec- 
tions having been made personally and with care and skill^,^ we are 
bound to accept them as genuine Arabians. When we find, 
therefore, that having been tested they are no better than the 
horses brought from Turkey or from Africa, we must conclude 
that the whole scheme is mere moonshine, and that Arabian 
blood as a means of improvement has failed to develop the value 
that enthusiasts and dreamers have claimed for it since "'time 
whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." 
Practical and thinking men always judge of the value of a breed 
of horses from what the representatives of that breed can do or what 
they fail to do. The emotional and unpractical are always look- 
ing for an ideal horse, and the poets and story writers are always 
furnishing them one. "Where a horse figures in a story he is 
uniformly endowed with an almost supernatural intelligence and 
sense. To finish up the ideal horse, he always traces back to the 
''Courser of the Desert." If his triumph is in a flight of speed, 
he distances all competitors because he is a pure Arabian. The 
story of "Ben Hur," written by General Lew Wallace, furnishes a 
fitting illustration of this tendency of the public mind. The story 
of the chariot race at Antioch is a masterpiece of most exciting 
ingenuity, and one of the finest specimens of word painting in 
the English language. The irascible old sheik is quite over- 
drawn, but the judgment and skill of Ben Hur cannot be sur- 
passed. As a matter of course, the team of black Arabians was 
bound to Avin. Every bright schoolboy in the country has read 
the story, and he has joined in the triumph of the black Arabians. 
The wide interest in the chariot race seemed to demand its pic- 
torial delineation, and soon the public was gratified with a large 
and elegant etching, which hangs before me as I write. The only 
trouble about this excellent work of the imagination and the 
team of black Arabians is that there were no horses in Arabia till 
about three hundred and fifty years after the date of this sup- 
posed scene. We must let the poets sing and the novelists work 
out their plots, but it is well to pay some attention to the facts 
and experiences of history. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 

The real origin of the English race horse in confusion — Full list of the 
"foundation stock" as given by Mr. Weatherby one hundred j'ears ago — 
The list complete and embraces all of any note — Admiral Rous' extrava- 
ganza — Godolphin Arabian's origin whollj' unknown — His history — 
Successful search for his true portrait — Stubbs' picture a caricature — The 
true portrait alone supplies all that is known of his origin and blood. 

The English Race Horse is the great central figure of all the 
horse literature of the past two hundred years. Much has been 
claimed for him and much has been written about him, in a hap- 
hazard way, by people who know but little of the subject. A tew 
men of independent and real thought have written on this sub- 
ject, .but they have devoted their attention to the comparing of 
family with family or individual with individual. Of the books 
tliat have been written by brainless people on the English horse 
there is no end, and they are generally mere repetitions, without 
giving credit, of what somebody has said before. Among all the 
books that have been written on this subject I have never yet 
found one that even pretended to make a serious attempt at dis- 
covering the real origin of the English Eace Horse. They all seem 
to agree with Admiral Eous that he is purely descended from the 
Arabian horse, and without one drop of the blood of the indig- 
■enous English horse. The average writer for the two past cen- 
turies has been content with just this much knowledge, and he 
wants nothing more. Occasionally it is modestly suggested in 
some magazine article that this exclusively Arabian origin may 
not be true, and I am glad to note that these suggestions are be- 
coming more frequent of late years. It has been claimed tliat 
the pure Arabian origin of the race horse "is as solid as a 
pyramid," all of which may be accepted — but, unfortunately for 
the claimant, the "pyramid" is standing on its apex, and when 
the facts breathe upon it, as gently as a zephyr, it will topple 
over. The most convenient and the most authoritative collec- 



68 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

tion of facts relating to the earliest exotic horses that were 
brought in is to be found in the English Stud Book itself, and 
as but few of my readers have access to this work, I will copy 
that portion of it entire, as it appears in the first volume, and 
the edition of 1803. In the edition of 1808 the list was reprinted 
with four additional animals and some verbal changes, which^ 
when important, will be noted. 

"ARABIANS, BARBS AND TURKS." 

1. The Helmsley Turk was an old Duke of Buckingham's and got Bus- 
tler, etc. 

2. Place's White Turk was the property of Mr. Place, studmaster to Oliver 
Cromwell, when Protector, and was the sire of Woruiwood Commoner, and 
the great grandams of Windham, Grey Ramsden and Cartouch. 

3. Royal Mares: King Charles the Second sent abroad the master of the 
horse, to procure a number of foreign horses and mares for breeding, and the 
mares brought over by him (as also many of their produce) have since been> 
called Royal Mares. 

4. Dodsworth, though foaled in England, was a natural Barb. His dam, a. 
Barb mare, was imported in the time of Charles the Second, and was called a 
Royal Mare. She was sold by the studmaster, after the king's death, for 
forty gu neas, at twenty years old, when in foal (by the Helmsley Turk) with 
Vixen, dam of the Old Child Mare. 

5. The Stradling or Lister Turk was brought into England by the Duke of 
Berwick, from the siege of Buda, in the reign of James the Second. He got 
Snake, the D. of Kingston's Brisk and Piping Peg, Coneyskins, the dam of 
Hip, and the grandam of Bolton Sweepstakes. 

6. The Byerly Turk was Captain Byerly's charger in Ireland, in King- 
William's wars (1869, etc.). He did not cover many bred mares, but was the 
sire of D. of Kingston's Sprite, who was thought nearly as good as Leedes; 
the D. of Rutland's Black Hearty and Archer, and the D. of Devonshire's 
Basto, Ld. Bristol's Grasshopper, and Ld. Godolphin's Byerly Gelding, all in 
good forms: Halloway's Jigg, a middling horse; and Knightley's Mare, in a. 
very good form. 

7. Greyhound. The cover of this foal was in Barbary, after which both 
his sire and dam were purchased, and brought into England by Mr. Marshall. 
He was got by King William's White Barb Chillaby. out of Slugey, a natural 
Barb Mare. Greyhound got the D. of Wharton's Othello, said to have beat 
Chanter easily in a trial, giving him a stone, but who, falling lame, ran only 
one match in public, against a bad horse; he also got Panton's Whitefoot, a 
very good horse; Osmyn, a very fleet horse and in good form for his size; the 
D. of Wharton's Rake, a middling horse; Ld. Halifax's Sampson, Goliah and 
Favorite, pretty good 12-stone Plate horses; Desdemona, and other good 
mares, and several ordinary Plate horses, who ran in the North where he .was 
a common stallion and covered many of the best mares. 

8. The D'Arcy White Turk was the sire of Old Hautboy, Grey Royal, 
Cannon, etc. 



THE ENGLISH KACE HORSE. 69 

9. The D'Arcy Yellow Turk was the sire of Spanker, Brimmer, and the 
:great-great-grandam of Cartouch. 

10. The Marshall or Selaby Turk was the property of Mr. Marshall's 
brother, studinaster to King William, Queen Anne, and King George the first. 
He got the Curwen Old Spot, the dain of Windham, the dam of Derby Tickle- 
pitcher, and great-grandam of Bolton Sloven and Fearnought. 

11. Curweu's Bay Barb was a present to Louis the Fourteenth from Muley 
Ishmael, King of Morocco, and was brougbt into England by Mr. ('urwen, 
who being in France when Count Byram and Count Thoulouse (two natural 
sons of Louis the Fourteenth) were, the former, master of the horse, and the 
latter an admiral, he procured of them two Barb horses, both of which proved 
excellent stallions, and were well known by the names of the Curwen Bay 
Barb and the Thoulouse Barb. Curwen's Bay Barb got Mixbury and Tantivy, 
both very excellent formed Galloways. The first of them was only thirteen 
hands two inches high, and yet there were not more than two horses of his 
time that could beat him at light weights. Brocklesby, Little George, Yellow 
Jack, Bay Jack, Monkey, Dangerfield, Hip, Peacock, and Flatface, the first 
two in good forms, the rest middling; two Mixburys, full brothers to the first 
Mixbury, middling Galloways; Long Meg, Brocklesby Betty, and Creeping 
Molly, extraordinarily high-formed mares; Whiteneck, Mistake, Sparkler, 
and Lightfoot, very good mares, and several middling Galloways, who ran for 
Plates in the North. He got two full sisters to Mixbury, one of whicb bred 
Partner, Little Scar, Soreheels and the dam of Crab; the other was the dam of 
<4uiet. Silver Eye and Hazard. He did not cover many mares except Mr. 
Curwen's and Mr. Pelham's. 

13. The Thoulouse Barb became afterward the property of Sir J. Parsons 
And was the sire of Bagpiper, Blacklegs, Mr. Panton's Molly, and the dam of 
Cinnamon. 

13. Darley's Arabian was brought over by a brother of Mr. Darley, of 
Yorkshire, who, being an agent in merchandise abroad, became member of a 
hunting club, by which means he acquired interest to procure this horse. He 
was the sire of Childers, and also got Almanzor, a very good horse; a white- 
legged horse of the D. of Somerset's, full brother to Almanzor, and thought to 
be as good, but meeting with an accident, he never ran in public; Cupid and 
Brisk, good horses; Daedalus, a very swift horse; Dart, Shipjack, Maica and 
Aleppo, good Plate horses, though out of bad mares; Ld. Lonsdale's Mare in 
very good form, and Ld. Tracy's Mare in a good one for Plates. He covered 
very few mares except Mr. Darley's, who had very few well-bred mares be- 
sides Almanzor's Dam. 

14. Sir J. William's Turk (more commonly called the Honeywood Arabian) 
got Mr. Honeywood's two True Blues; the elder of them was the best Plate 
horse in England, for four or five years; the younger was in very high form 
and got the Rumford Gelding, and Ld. Onslow's Grey Hor.se, middling horses out 
of road mares. It is not known that this Turk covered any bred mares except 
the dam of the two True Blues. 

15. The Belgrade Turk was taken at the siege of Belgrade, by Gen. Merci, 
and sent by him to the Prince de Craon, from whom he was a present to the 
Prince of Lorraine. He was afterward purchased by Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, 
and died in his possession about 1740. 



70 THE HORSE OF AMEEICA. 

16. Croft's Bay Barb was got by Chillaby, out of the Moonah Barb Mare. 

17. The Godolphin Arabian was imported by Mr. Coke, at whose death he 
became (together with Cade, Kegulus, etc., then young) the property of Ld. 
Godolphin. His first employment was that of a teaser to Hobgoblin, who, re- 
fusing to cover Roxana, she was put to the Arabian, and from that cover pro- 
duced Lath, the first of his get. He was also_ sire of Cade, Regulus, Blank, 
etc., and what is considered very remarkable, as well as a strong proof of his 
excellence as a stallion, there is not a superior horse now on the turf without a 
cross of the Godolphin Arabian, neither has there been for several years past. 
He was a brown bay, with no white, except on the off heel behind, and about 
fifteen hands high (a pi ture of him is in the library at Gog Magog, Cambridge- 
shire). It is not known to what particular race of the Arab breed, indeed it 
has been asserted that he was a Barb. He died at Gog Magog in 1753, in or 
about the 29th year of his age. The story of his playfellow, the black cat, 
must not be omitted here, especially as an erroneous account has got abroad, 
copied from the first introduction to the present work. Instead of his grieving 
for the loss of the cat she survived him, though but for a short time; she sat 
upon him after he was dead in the building erected for him, and followed him 
to the place where he was buried under a gateway near the running stable; sat 
upon him there till he was buried, then went away, and never was seen again, 
till found dead in the hayloft. 

18. The Cullen Arabian was brought over by Mr. Nosco and was sire of Mr. 
Warren's Camillus, Ld. Orford's Matron, Mr. Gorges' Sour Face, the dam of 
Regulator, etc., etc. 

19. The Coomb Arabian (sometimes called the Pigot Arabian and sometimes 
the Bolingliroke Grey Arabian) was the sire of Methodist, the dam of Crop, 
etc., etc. 

20. The Compton Barb, more commonly called the Sedley Arabian, was sire 
of Coquette, Greyling, etc. 

(Additions in 1808 Edition.) 

21. King James the First bought an Arabian of Mr Markham, a merchant, 
for 500gs.. said (but with little probability) to have been the first of the breed 
ever seen in England. The Duke of Newcastle says, in his treatise on Horse- 
manship, that he had seen the above Arabian, and describes him as a small 
bay horse, and not of very excellent .shape. 

22. Bloody Buttocks; nothing further can be traced from the papers of the 
late Mr. Crofts than that he was a grey Arabian, with a red mark on his 
hip. from whence he derived his name. 

23. The Vernon Arabian was a small chestnut horse. He covered at High- 
flyer H. 11, and was the sire of Alert, etc. Alert had good speed for a short 
distance. 

24 & 25. The Wellesley Grey, and Chestnut Arabians (so called) were 
brought from the East, but evidently not .\rabians. The former was a horse 
of good shape, with the size and substance of an English hunter. 

This list of twenty-seven different animals, which for the sake' 
of convenience I have numbered, was presented to the public 



THE English: race horse. 71 

more than a hundred years ago by Mr. Weatherby, the highest of 
all English authorities, as the foundation stock from which the 
English race horse was propagated. The uniform omission of 
dates of importations, etc., discloses the fact that the compiler 
had no accurate knowledge of the animals or their history, and 
that he was dependent largely upon very uncertain traditions for 
his information. It must not be understood that the animals in 
this list were contemporaneous, or that the list embraces all the 
foreign animals that were brought in, but only those that were 
recognized as of value in founding the breed. 

To understand just what we have to consider, I will place here, 
in juxtaposition to the above list, the remark of Admiral Kous, at 
one time the great race-horse authority of England, which ex- 
presses the popular opinion as to the origin of the race horse, 
that is practically universally held in all lands. The admiral 
says: "The British race horse is a pure Eastern exotic whose 
pedigree may be traced two thousand years, thq true sou of 
Arabia Deserta, without a drop of English blood." To reach 
the approximate truth on the issue here made, and to puncture 
this extravaganza is the work now before us. 

Numbers 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, were Turks, and to these we 
may add Mr. Darley's horse, known as the Darley Arabian, num- 
ber 13, for he was brought from Aleppo in Turkey, far removed 
from Arabia, and famous for the great numbers and excellence of 
its horses many centuries before Arabia had any horses. To carry 
horses, for sale, from the deserts of Arabia, where they are 
scarce, to the region of Aleppo, where they are very plenty, and 
of the highest quality, would be simply "carrying coals to New- 
castle." We may therefore safely conclude that the ten horses 
here enumerated were Turks. 

Numbers 4, 7, 11, 12, 16, 20 were Barbs, as they are named in 
the list. It is a surprise to me that these six horses should be 
designated as "Barbs," for it has been the usage of many gener- 
ations to call these horses "Arabians." As late as 1819 the Dey 
of Algiers sent several Algerine horses as a present to the Prince 
Regent of England, and they were always spoken of as "Arabians. " 

Numbers 17, 18, 19, 21,22, 23, 24, 25 are all unsatisfactory as to 
their origin. Number 17 — Lord Godolphin's horse — is wholly 
unknown as to his blood elements, and further on his history will 
be considered. Number 18 "was brought over," but from 
whence nobody knows. Number 19 is in the same condition, and 



72 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

not one of his different owners has been able to tell us anything 
about his origin. Number 21 was, possibly, an Arabian, but the 
Duke of Newcastle, who knew the horse well, seems to have 
doubted his genuineness on account of his inferiority. However 
this mity have been, he preceded other importations so many 
years that it is not known that he ever sired a colt, and as a pro- 
genitor we may as well strike him out. Number 22 seems to be 
in darlcness, and all efforts to find his origin having failed he may 
as well be classed as unknown. Number 23 is furnished with no 
evidence that he was entitled to be classed as an Arabian. Num- 
bers 24 and 25 were confessedly not genuine. 

This reduces the analysis to its lowest form and shows that in 
the original foundation stock, including Mr. Barley's horse (13), 
there were ten Turks and six Barbs that can be accepted with 
reasonable certainty. This leaves eight so-called "Arabians, "" 
from which we must eliminate numbers 17, 21, 24, 25, leaving 
numbers 18, 19, 22, 23, without any evidence whatever that they 
were Arabians except in name. From these four rather obscure 
animals, therefore, according to the Rous dictum, the English 
race horse must have derived every drop of his blood; and yet 
there is not a scintilla of evidence either direct or inferential that 
any one of them, or the ancestors of any one of them, ever saw 
Arabia. From the custom of calling every horse from abroad 
an "Arabian," that has prevailed in England for more than two 
hundred years, it is fair to conclude that there was no Arabian 
blood in the foundation stock. It was the blood of the Turks 
and the Barbs, commingled with that of the native blood that had 
been bred to race for centuries, that furnished the foundation of 
the modern English and American race horse. 

Blood in the race horse is an imperative necessity, but it must 
be blood that has been carefully selected from winners, and raced 
for generations, or it is of no value as an element of speed. If 
the English race horse had been a strictly pure exotic from 
Arabia Deserta, as Admiral Rous maintained, he would have 
been of no value either as a race horse or the progenitor of race 
horses, without many generations of careful selection and develop- 
ment of speed. 

The Godolphin Arabian was altogether the greatest horse of 
his century. He flourished during most of the reign of King 
George II., but the horsemen of the world, even Englishmen 
themselves, know far more about him than they do about the 



•THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 73 

reign of that monarch. Still, nobody knows anything of his 
birthplace, his origin or his blood. He was to the English race 
horse what Eysdyk's Hambletonian has been to the American 
trotter. Neither of them was ever in a race, but each of them 
stood immeasurably superior to all others of his day as a pro- 
genitor of speed, at his own gait. From the latter we had reason 
to expect speed because we knew he inherited speed, but from 
the former we had no reason to expect anything, for we knew 
nothing of what he inherited until he proved his inheritance by 
what he transmitted to his progeny. Some of the principal semi- 
tragic incidents, so far as known in the early life of Godolphiu 
Arabian, were seized upon by the great novelist Eugene Sue, and 
out of them grew a "horse novel" from his gifted pen. The 
horse was foaled about 1734, was brought to England from France 
about 1730, and died at Magog Hills, 1753. There seems to be a 
substantial agreement among those who had the best opportuni- 
ties to know that the horse was employed on the streets of Paris 
as a common drudge in a cart and driven by a brutal master. A 
Mr. Coke, who is represented to have been a Quaker, was in Paris 
on business and he happened to witness the brutality of the 
ruffian who was this horse's master in trying to make him draw a 
load of wood up a steep acclivity on to a new bridge, which the 
horse after repeated trials and clubbings was unable to accom- 
plish. To relieve the poor brute from his sufferings, Mr. Coke's 
feelings of humanity asserted themselves, and he stepped forward 
and bought the horse on the spot and had him released from the 
cart. Mr. Coke, it is said, brought the horse to London and pre- 
sented him to Mr. Williams, the proprietor of a famous coffee- 
house, and Mr. Williams presented him to Earl Godolphin. 

In September, 1829, Mr. John S. Skinner commenced the publi- 
cation of the first horse magazine that ever appeared in this 
country, and in the first number there appeared a steel engraving 
purporting to be executed by the famous Stubbs and to represent 
the great horse, Godolphin Arabian. Not many years afterward 
I came into possession of a copy of this publication from the be- 
ginning, and the sight of this picture always impressed me as the 
most ludicrous abortion of the likeness of a horse that could be 
conceived of. The neck was absolutely longer than the body, 
the legs were about strong enough for a sheep, and all over it 
lacked strength of both muscle and bone to a most absurd extent. 
When this picture appeared in London, some years before, it was 



74 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

laughed at by all artists as well as by all men who knew anything 
about the shape of a horse, as a monstrosity, and it was received 
in the same spirit on this side of the water; but it bore the name 
of a great artist and that was sufficient to secure the approbation 
of the unthinking and the unknowing. The only key to the 
origin of the horse, the only pedigree that can be given, must be 
found written in his own structure of bone and muscle and 
brain. A true delineation, therefore, of his form and shape be- 
came a matter of the highest moment, not merely to satisfy the 
curiosity of the curious, but as a study of the true sources of his 
wonderful prepotency. 

Sixty-five years ago a correspondent of Mr. Skinner's maga- 
zine, referred to above, and a descendant of Mr. Samuel Gallo- 
way of Maryland, spoke of an oil painting of Godolphin Arabian 
that had hung in the hall at Tulip Hill from the days of his 
childhood as still hanging there, and said that it was wholly 
unlike the Stubbs engraving. Mr. Galloway was one of Mary- 
land's land barons, an enthusiastic horse breeder, and a success- 
ful horse racer. He was educated at Cambridge, I think; and if 
so, no doubt he saw Godolphin Arabian many times before he 
died, for he was within four or five miles of him, and his sport- 
ing instincts could not fail to take him to see so great a horse 
when so near at hand. As he was a young man of great wealth 
and great ambitions, it is quite probable he was on terms of 
friendly acquaintance, if not intimacy, with Lord Godolphin, and 
thus secured the oil painting from that distinguished friend him- 
self. This theory is strengthened by the fact that the picture 
still bears the coat of arms of Lord Godolphin. 

To reach and secure this picture, or at least a faithful copy of 
it, became an object of continuous effort that was never inter- 
mitted for more than twenty years. At last, in the spring of 
1877, one of the correspondents of Wallace's Montldij, Prof. M. C. 
Ellzey, of Blacksburg, Virginia, wrote me that the picture was 
then the property of Dr. J. H. Murray (whose wife was a lineal 
descendant of Mr. Galloway) of Cedar Park, adjoining Tulip Hill, 
West River, Maryland, and that he would have the picture sent 
to me. In a few days it arrived, and when my eyes rested upon 
it, it was like the feast of a lifetime; for there was all that could 
ever be known of the greatest horse of his century. The paint- 
ing was in a state of excellent preservation and the coat of arms 
of Lord Godolphin was plainly traceable. The horse is shown 



THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 75 

from his right side, in his rough, paddock condition, with his 
right hind foot a little advanced, and his head low and without 
any animation or excitement. The standpoint of the artist is a 
little forward of the shoulders, and he must have been a tall man 
or the horse must have been a low horse, or perhaps both, for 
he sees over the horse and portrays the fine spring of muscle over 
the loin, on the opposite side of the vertebra. From the position 
of the artist the drawing is slightly foreshortened, and this, to- 
gether with the advance of his right hind foot, intensifies the 
droop of the rump, to some degree, in the outline. From the 
proportions, as shown in the painting, I would conclude he was 
below fourteen and a half hands high rather than above it. His 
head is striking and unusually large for an animal of his size, 
with remarkable width between the eyes, and without a star to 
lighten it up. His ear is not fine, and it droops backward as he 
stands, as if half-asleep. His mane is sparse and in disorder. 
His throat-latch is very good, and the windpipe large and well 
developed. The neck is of a fair length for a horse of his blocky 
formation, and there is nothing unusual about it except its great 
depth at the collar place. The slope of the shoulder is very 
marked and shows his ability to carry his head in the air when 
he wished to do so, but the shoulder itself is coarse and angular 
to an unusual degree. His withers rise very abruptly and there 
is great perpendicular depth tlirough the carcass at this point. 
His back is remarkably short and the spread and arch of his loins 
is simply magnificent. But the point of superlative excellence is 
in the remarkable development of power in his quarters. His 
limbs, instead of being ''spider legs," are unusually strong for 
an animal of his size; indeed, they might be considered coarse 
for any horse that was pretended to be a race horse. His tail is 
of the usual weight and somewhat wavy. AVith the addition that 
there is a little white at the coronet of the right hind foot, 
and not forgetting his friend and companion the cat, I have 
made a somewhat detailed description of what is represented in 
the painting. Several artists examined the picture, and they 
pronounced it the work of an artist of ability and experience. 
The signature ''D. M. pinxt" was carefully examined, but no 
one was able to throw any light upon the name represented by 
the initial letters "D. M." 

While this painting contained within itself evidence of its 
great value as a likeness of its subject, it lacked confirmation 



76 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

as "true to the life;" and nothing could supply this 
lack but to find a portrait of the same horse, painted by another 
artist, and then if the two agreed, the proof would be fully satis- 
fying to the understanding. A little over a hundred years ago 
Lord Francis Grodolphin Osborne, Duke of Leeds, and heir to 
Lord Grodolphin, wrote Sir Charles Bunbury, a great race-horse 
man, that he had a painting of Godolphin Arabian, by Wootton, 
at Gog Magog Hills. Over sixty years ago an American gentle- 
man wrote to Mr. Skinner's magazine that he had seen a paint- 
ing of Grodolphin Arabian hanging in Houghton Hall, Norfolk. 
In 1878 my physician told me I must quit work for awhile, and 
that I had better visit the great Exposition at Paris that year. I 
was anxious to see the Fair, but I was a great deal more anxious 
to see those two paintings of Godolphin Arabian, if they were 
still in existence. Gog Magog Hills is a quaint old place, and the 
origin and meaning of its name is lost in a very remote antiquity. 
As it has not been the residence of its owners for more than a 
hundred years, it is much neglected. The people in charge were 
very obliging, and I was immediately admitted to the view of 
Wootton's painting of Godolphin Arabian. The first glance was 
a complete vindication of the truthfulness of the Maryland paint- 
ing as a true likeness in every important feature of the outline 
and proportions. The canvas is about four and a half by four 
feet, inclosed in a massive frame. After studying it and com- 
paring it, point by point for more than an hour, with a copy of 
the Maryland painting, it became evident they were not painted 
by the same hand, although the horse had the same position in 
both pictures, with the exception that the right hind foot was- 
thrown backward in the Wootton painting instead of forward, 
and thus gave a less abrupt droop of the rump. The head was 
precisely the same shape, but in the large painting the articula- 
tions were less distinct and expressive. 

After a little peregrination through Norfolk, studying the 
"Norfolk Trotter" as then called, but since called "Hackney," 
on his "native heath," I reached Houghton Hall, in Norfolk. 
This grand old place was built over a hundred and sixty years 
ago by the famous Sir Kobert Walpole, and at that time it was 
considered the most splendid structure, as a gentleman's country 
seat, in all England. For many years it has been the property 
of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, but is not often occupied as a 
residence. Here too, I was lucky, for upon my entrance to th& 



THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 77 

picture gallery, about the first object upon which my eye rested 
was the painting of the Godolphin Arabian, and the first impres- 
sion was that there must be "spooks" around, for that seemed 
certainly the Maryland picture I was looking at. I had it taken 
down and removed to a good light, and there the whole mystery 
was removed. It is difficult to compare two peas. All you can 
say about them is that they were just alike, and that is all I can 
say about the Galloway picture in Maryland and the Houghton 
Hall picture in England. The paintings were the same size, and 
the pigments used were of precisely the same shades of color and 
quality. The colors were peculiar in the fact that the artist had 
used no varnish nor oil that would leave a shiny appearance. 
The Houghton Hall picture had a black, glossy margin all around 
it of about five inches in width on which the names of the most 
noted of his progeny were inscribed in gold letters, and at the 
bottom was this inscription: "The original picture taken at The 
Hills, by D. Murrier, painter to H. R. H. the Duke of Cumber- 
land." This explained the modest signature attached to the 
Maryland picture, which was a replica of the original. "The 
Hills" is the local designation of "Gog Magog Hills." The word 
"original" not only implies that the picture was made from life, 
but that one or more replicas were made at the same time. 

Here, then, in this picture, we have all that we know or proba- 
bly ever will know of the origin and pedigree of this horse. It 
does not tell us what he was, but it does tell us in the most clear 
and unmistakable language what he was not. There is no feature 
nor element in his make-up that does not say that he was neither 
an Arabian nor a Barb. He was a stout, strong-boned, heavily 
muscled, short-legged horse. In his form and shape he was very 
far removed from an ideal progenitor of race horses, but he was 
that progenitor all the same. About forty years after his death 
Mr. Stubbs, who never saw the horse, brought out a painting of 
him which all artists laughed at as the picture of an impossible 
horse. This picture, however, was engraved on steel and became 
the standard representation of Godolphin Arabian, in England, 
till this day. Both these pictures are here given, and a com- 
parison of many points makes it evident that Stubbs copied from 
the original of Murrier or from the painting by Wootton, which 
was probably also a copy of Murrier, and he followed his copy 
just as closely as he could while converting a big-boned, stout 
saddle horse into a long-necked, spindle-shanked race horse. 



78 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

By actual measurement the neck is longer than the body, but it 
is not necessary to point out the Stubbs absurdities, as they are 
apparent to every eye. It was simply an awkward and dishonest 
attempt to express in his form and shape such a pedigree as a 
great racing sire should have had. In these two pictures we have 
the real and the imaginary — the honest and the dishonest. 

The search for this picture and then for its verification was a 
labor of many years. I never expected to find the horse's origin, 
but the discovery of his likeness seemed to be in the bounds of a 
possibility that was finally realized. Murrier's picture, as a 
mere work of art, is of no mean value. It contains within itself 
undoubted evidence that it is a true picture of a horse, and it is 
shown circumstantially that this horse Avas the great "unknown 
and untraced founder" of the English race horse, with nothing 
of the race horse in his appearance. 

The name of this horse has been a misnomer ever since the 
day he fell into the hands of Lord Godolphin, and it has misled 
a multitude of men to their financial hurt. Of late years the 
more intelligent class of writers, instead of calling him an 
"Arabian" call him a "Barb," but there is just as much pro- 
priety in using one name as the other, and not a scintilla of 
authority for using either. Whatever may have been his origin, 
his marvelous structural combination of propelling power sup- 
plied what was wanting in the English stock of his day, and gave 
him success. Since then thousands of Arabians and Barbs have 
been tried and all of them have failed. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE {Continued). 

England supplied with horses be ore the Christian era — Bred for different 
purposes — Markham on the speed of early native horses — Duke of New- 
castle on Arabians — Hisch ice of blood to propagate — Size of early English 
horses — Difficulties about pedigrees in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries — Early accumulations very trashy — The Galloways and Irish 
Hobbies — Discrepancies in size — The old saddle stock — The pacers wiped 
out — Partial revision of the English Stud Book. 

Britain was fully supplied with horses when first invaded by 
the Eomaiis, but as there is no history beyond that period we are 
only groping in the dark when we attempt to discover when or 
whence this supj)ly was procured. The most reasonable theory 
is that the first supply came from the Phoenician merchants, 
when they were trading for tin in the southwestern part of 
Britain. If this theory be correct, the trading between the 
Phcenicians and the Britons could hardly have been later than 
the fourth century before the Christian era, and it is more prob- 
able that it was several centuries earlier. This topic, however, 
has been considered in a preceding chapter. Another theory is 
that when the tides of migration struck the Atlantic, in the 
higher latitudes, there was a natural deflection toward the 
warmer countries of the south, the people carrying their horses 
with them. But from the primitive condition of the arts and of 
maritime affairs among the Norsemen of that very early period, 
and from the insular position of Britain, it seems to me that to 
reach it with horses, the most probable source of supply was from 
that great nation whose "ships of Tarshish" had been trading to 
all lands more than a thousand years before the Christian era. 
But, laying all theories aside, there are some facts and dates that 
we know, and the particular one to which I wish here to call at- 
tention is the historical record that when the Eomans first visited 
Britain they found an abundant supply of horses; and this was 
about four hundred years before Arabia received her supply from 
the Emperor Constantius. 



80 THE HOKSE OF AMEBIC A.. 

From the time of the Romans in Britain, horse-racing has been 
a popular and favorite amusement of our ancestors, and from that 
time horses have been bred for special purposes. The "Great 
Horse/' as he was called, was bred for war, parade, and show, 
and was large enough and strong enough to carry a knight in 
armor. The smaller horses were bred for the race or the chase, 
others for the saddle on account of their easy, gliding motion, and 
the comfort of the rider, while others, again, were stout of back and 
limb and able to carry burdens. In regard to the speed of the 
horses bred for that purpose, Mr. Gerva^e Markham, the second 
Englishman who^ undertook to write a book on the horse, has 
given us some very interesting and valuable information. He 
brought out his work in the latter part of the sixteenth century, 
and it passed through several "enlarged and improved" editions. 
In the edition of 1606 he says: 

"For ssviftuess what nation lias brought forth theho^se which excelled the 
English ? When the best Barbanes that ever were in their prime, I saw them 
overcome by a black Hobbie, of Salisbury, and yet that black Hobbie was over- 
come by a horse called Valt^ntine, which Valentine neither in hunting nor 
running was ever equalled, yet was a plain English horse, both by syre and 
dam." 

From this we must conclude that some horses from the Bar- 
bary States had been brought over previous to 1606, which doubt- 
less antedated the arrival of King James' Arabian. This is the 
horse known as the Markham Arabian, and is in the above list of 
foundation stallions. In speaking of the Arabian horses as a 
breed, the Duke of Newcastle remarks as follows upon this 
particular representative of that breed: 

"I never saw but one of these horses, which Mr. John Markham, a 
merchant, brought over and said he was a right Arabian. He was a bay, but a 
little horse, and no rarity for shape, for I have seen many English horses far 
finer. Mr. Markham sold him to King .lames for five hundred pounds, and 
being trained up for a course (race), when he came to run every horse beat 
him." 

The duke then goes on to speak of the staying qualities of the 
Arabians: 

" They talk they will ride fourscore miles in a day and never draw 
the bridle. When I was young I could have bought a nag for ten pounds that 
•would have done as much very easily." 



THE ENGLISH KACE HORSE. 81 

These remarks are repeated here because they are specially per- 
tinent in this connection. 

It will be conceded by every one who has any knowledge of the 
horse history of this period that the Duke of Newcastle was the 
best-informed man of his generation on all subjects connected 
with the history and breeding of the horse. His preference for 
blood was in the following order: The Barb, the Turk, the 
Spaniard, the Neapolitan, and the handsomest of the English 
stock. It will be observed that in this classification the Arabian 
has no place. 

From these illustrations, to which other similar ones might be 
added, it seems to be evident tliat the native English stock did 
not lack speed so much as they lacked quality, iinish, and beauty. 
Perhaps size should be included in this enumeration. They had 
been bred and trained to run for centuries, and they were as stout 
and fleet as the exotics, but they lacked the qualifications of 
beauty and style. The foreigners possessed what the natives 
lacked, and more than all they furnished both the climatic and 
the blood outcross that were needed to re-invigorate the native 
character. It was the custom of the people in the seventeenth 
century to let their horses of both sexes roam at will through 
forests and glades, and in this way the average size had been re- 
duced and the law of Henry VIII. (prohibiting the running at 
large of stallions under a certain size) had become a nullity. 
At the time of the restoration of Charles II. (1660) the average 
size of the traveling stock of England was very small — perhaps 
not over thirteen hands high — and then commenced the serious 
work of increasing the size and improving the speed of the light 
horse stock, under the direction and influence of the Duke of 
Newcastle. The introduction of the new blood would give vigor 
to the stock, but as that blood was the blood of Turks and Barbs, 
probably but little if any larger than the native stock, the mys- 
tery still remains unsolved. In about one hundred years from 
that time the average size of the race horse had been brought up 
from less than fourteen to about fifteen hands. This increase of 
size cannot be accounted for on any other grounds than the in- 
troduction of the blood of some larger breed. We cannot con- 
ceive of this being the blood of the old Flanders stock that had 
been brought over centuries before; hence I am strongly of the 
opinion that the duke knew just what he was doing when he 
brought in a lot of stallions and mares (the latter called the 



82 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

"Eoyal Mares") without telling anybody what they were or- 
where they came from. This yiew is strengthened by the fact 
that none of the descendants of these mares, for several genera- 
tions, ever made a mark upon the turf. If we reject this theory 
of the "Royal Mares/' we are then forced to the conclusion that 
the increase of size came chiefly from the large cold-blooded 
mares of the native stock. The fleet running families of the 
natives were small, and the imported Turks and Barbs were but 
little if any larger; hence, if we accept the evidence of our own 
senses and study the great variations in height, we cannot reject 
the conclusion that these variations had their origin in the size 
of the original elements entering into the formation of the breed. 
What was the extent of the influence of the speed of the old 
English race horse upon the new race horse that sprang up in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? This is a question that 
has not been very much discussed, but every intelligent and 
thinking man has given it more or less thought. Britain was 
not rapid in the progress of civilization and refinement, but 
through all the centuries of her history she had her race horses 
and she ran them. There can be no doubt that many of these 
native horses could outrun and outlast the best of the exotics, 
that were brought in. None of those exotics, so far as we know, 
could run and win. Their value, then, was measured, not by 
what they could do themselves, but by what their progeny could 
do; and that progeny, at the foundation, carried half the blood of 
the old tribes. There were no racing calendars in the seven- 
teenth century and none till the second decade of the eighteenth, 
and during all that time the blood of every man's horse would, 
naturally, be fashionable blood. When the racing calendars 
were established they were a partial check upon untruthful repre- 
sentations, but this check only extended to the sire of the ani- 
mal, and was then not always trustworthy. This left the whole 
maternal side open to all kinds of misrepresentation, and as the 
Anglo-Saxon race is fond of liberty, every man exercised the 
liberty of making his pedigrees to suit himself. Thus, through 
advertisements, sale papers, etc., great multitudes of fictitious 
pedigrees, all shaped on fashionable lines, gained currency and 
were propagated from owner to owner, from generation to gener- 
ation. On this point I speak from the personal knowledge of a 
long lifetime in connection with such affairs in our own country, 
and I take it for granted that our English ancestors were no 



THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 83 

better and no worse than we are ourselves. This was the condi- 
tion of things in Enghind for about one hundred and fifty years, 
and when Mr. Weatherby was at work on the Stud Book he was 
overflowed with a flood of those bald-headed fictions, concocted by 
generations long past, and nobody could disprove them. In 
this way a large portion of the accumulated rubbish of past gen- 
erations found its way into the English Stud Book and there it 
stands to-day, serving only to misguide the seeker after truth. 

The earliest records of English racing commence with the year 
1709, and at Newmarket 1716. There have been several racing 
calendars published at different times, but probably the best and 
most convenient for office use is the Racing Register published 
by Bailey Bros., commencing with tlie first and now filling several 
large volumes. In the early days very few of the winners even 
had any pedigree, but after the lapse of about fifty years we find 
it the rule to insert the sire of all winners, although there were 
still some exceptions. Under this usage it became possible in 
the course of time to establish the leading facts on the paternal 
side, and thus the work of the stud-book compiler was greatly 
facilitated. Those racing calendars, although intended merely 
to serve the convenience of men who bet their money, caring 
nothing for blood, served the more permanent and valuable pur- 
pose of fixing the paternal lines in the genealogy of the English 
race horse. 

In 1786 Mr. William Pick, of York, England, published "A 
Careful Collection of all the Pedigrees it was then Possible to 
Obtain," thus antedating Mr. VVeatherby's "Introduction" by 
five years. In 1785 Mr. Pick had commenced the publication of 
a racing calendar called "The Sportsman and Breeder's Vade 
Mecum," which was continued a good many years. These little 
annual volumes were well received, and they were the forerunners 
of Pick's Turf Register, the first volume of which was brought 
out in 1703. This was the same year that the first volume of 
Weatherby 's Stud Book appeared, and there was a sharp rivalry 
between the two authors, not merely as two men, but as repre- 
senting two divisions of the country. Mr. Pick was a Yorkshire 
man and Mr. Weatherby was a Londoner. Yorkshire claimed to 
be the "race-horse region" of England, and the Southrons were 
ready to fight rather than concede that claim. This rivalry sur- 
vived two or three generations of racing men, and it is a question 



84 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

whether it lias yet subsided. In the north Pick was the author- 
ity and in the south, Weatherby. 

These two men worked on different plans, and each had its ad- 
vantages. Pick limited his labors to the great animals of the 
past, and took them up in chronological order, giving a brief 
sketch of the history and performances of each. This plan re- 
quired space, and when he had completed his first volume of five 
hundred and twenty-eight pages he had only reached the close of 
1763. The second volume, bringing the work down to the close 
of 1772, made its appearance in 1805. Mr. Pick did not live to 
continue the work, and it fell into the hands of Mr. E. Johnson, 
who brought out the third volume in 1822, which continued the 
chronological order to the close of 1782. After the lapse of forty- 
five years, namely 1867, the fourth volume appeared under Mr. 
Johnson's name, bringing the work to the close of 1792, and I am 
not aware that the work has been continued. These four volumes 
contained much that cannot be found elsewhere, and are very 
valuable. 

When we come to study these assemblages of impossible things 
put together and called pedigrees, we begin to realize the abso- 
lute rottenness of the alleged pedigrees of that whole early period. 
Take, for instance, the case of the horse called the Bald G-alloway. 
lie bore this name because he had a bald face, and was of the 
Galloway breed. This Galloway breed took its name from the 
old Province of Galloway, in the southwestern part of Scotland. 
They were small, active horses and were famous for many genera- 
tions as a breed of pacers. It has been said that the last pacers in 
Great Britain were found in Galloway. This horse, Bald Gallo- 
way, was foaled some time about 1708 and was famous as a fast 
race horse till he trained oif at five years old. I think there is 
no doubt about his being a genuine Galloway, and if so how 
could he have a pedigree all of foreign blood and ending in a 
'"Royal Mare?" This Galloway horse was the sire ot the famous 
Roxana, that produced Lath and his full brother Cade, that 
made the early reputation of the great Godolphin Arabian. I 
will ask my readers to refer to the Ourwen Bay Barb, No. 11, 
near the commencement of this chapter. This was one of the 
very best of all the Barbs imj)orted, and his origin and history are 
given with unusual fullness, as well as an enumeration of the best 
of his get. In examining this enumeration it will be seen that a 
good number of his best foals were out of Galloway mares and 



THE ENGLISH RACE HORSE. 85 

are called *'GaIloways." Brocklesby Betty was one of the great 
mares of her day, and the Stud Book says that "as a runner, she 
was thought to be the superior of any horse or mare of her time." 
She was foaled 1711, was got by Ourwen Bay Barb and out of Mr. 
Leedes' Hobby Mare. She was a brood mare before she was 
trained, and her performances were soon after the establishment 
of the Racing Calendars, which show her great superiority. The 
"Hobbies" were a breed of Irish pacing horses that had been 
noted for more than a hundred years, on both sides of the Irish 
channel, as saddle horses, hunters, and runners. The theory 
that these "Irish Hobbies" were descended from the horses on 
board one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, that was wrecked 
on the Irish coast, is purely fanciful, for they were known as a 
breed long before the Spanish Armada was projected. The Hob- 
bies were larger and better formed, as a rule, than the Gralloways, 
and more highly esteemed. These illustrations of the influence 
and power of indigenous blood in the formation of the breed 
known throughout the world as the English race horse might be 
extended indefinitely, but let these suffice. With the "Gallo- 
ways" and the "Hobbies," well known to our ancestors two hun- 
dred years ago as established breeds or tribes of horses, we cannot 
avoid the conclusion that they were very prodigal of fancy and 
very economical of" truth when they attempted to clothe Bald 
Galloway, Leedes' Hobby, etc., in foreign pedigrees to make 
them fashionable. Aside from the matters of evidence here intro- 
duced going to show the composite material entering into the 
constitution, structure and instincts of the race horse as he is to- 
day, there is another that plays a very prominent part in the 
combination. When we see a race horse fourteen hands high, 
and another of equally pure blood standing beside him seventeen 
hands high, we naturally wonder, and ask. Why this difference 
in size? The Turk, the Barb, the Hobby, the Galloway, and in- 
deed all the old English racing stock, were very small, scarcely 
averaging fourteen hands. After we have made every allowance 
for a salubrious climate and a generous and unstinted dietary we 
must concede a gradual increase of growth, but these things fail to 
account for a difference of twelve inches in the height of two 
horses bred in the same lines for untold generations. The con- 
clusion seems to be inevitable that there were big horses as well 
as little ones in the original combination of ancestors. From 
these diverse sources of his inheritance, it becomes plain to the 



86 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

mind of every one that the English race horse is thoroughly com- 
posite in the blood he inherits, and it is beyond the powers of 
analysis to determine whether one element did more than another 
in making him the fastest running horse in the world. 

While it might be forcibly, if not conclusively, argued that the 
native English horse had in him all the elements necessary to the 
development of a breed of race horses as great as the breed of 
our own day, there is one fact ever present to the senses which 
goes to show that the influence of exotic blood was very wide and 
very powerful in controlling the action of the race horse. The 
popular and prevailing pacing action of the Hobbies, the Gal- 
loways, and other hunting, racing and saddle tribes was com- 
pletely wiped out more than a hundred years ago. Any attempt 
to account for this revolution in the gait of the English horse as 
a fancy of fashion, or on the introduction of wheeled vehicles, 
fails to satisfy the understanding. In the first half of the seven- 
teenth century pacers were popular, common, and abounded 
everywhere. In the second half of the eighteenth century not 
one could be found in all Britain, "from Land's End to John 
O'Groat's House." Of all the facts that are known and estab- 
lished in the history of the English horse, the wiping out of the 
pacer is the most striking and significant. This exterminating 
process was not limited to the families that were intended for 
hunting or racing purposes, but extended to all types and breeds 
of English horses. The little English pacers that had been the 
favorites of kings and princes and nobles for so many centuries 
were submerged in the streams of Saracenic blood that flowed in 
upon them, and their only legitimate descendants left upon the 
face of the earth found homes in the American colonies. 
Their blood is one of the principal elements in the foundation of 
the English race horse, but the "lateral action" in his progeny 
was esteemed a bar-sinister on the escutcheon of the stallion, and 
it Avas sought to be covered up with something more fashionable 
in name. The old saddle horses of England were not all pacers, 
although that habit of action was very general among them, and 
in some families it was more uniform and confirmed than in 
others, and my authority for this conclusion will be found in the 
detailed account of the horses brought from England to the 
American colonies early in the seventeenth century. It is evi- 
dent that from the day the blood of the Saracenic horse was 
brought in contact with that of the indigenous saddle horse, they 



THE EXGLISli KACE HOKSE. 87 

were antagonistic, if in nothing more, certainly in the habit of 
miction. The one never moved in the hiteral action and the other 
Tery generally adopted that form of progression because it was 
his inheritance. What might have been the result if left to the 
laws of ''natural selection," it would be impossible to decide; 
but with the dictates of profit to the master, the mandates of 
fashion, and above all the accepted teachings of the Duke of 
Newcastle, the little pacer had no "friends at court," and all he 
could do was to get out of the way, with his lateral action. In 
our own country and under the observation of everybody the 
pacer shows great tenacity to his long-inherited habit of action, 
and although buried in non-pacing blood, as supposed, for two or 
three generations, the pace is liable to appear again, at any time. 
So it was, doubtless in English experiences, but as the revolution 
was not retarded by the development of pacing speed, in one 
hundred years from the restoration, in 1660, there was no longer 
a pacer on British soil. 

When the first Mr. Weatherby assumed the task of making and 
keeping a registry of English race horses, he seems to have had 
only a very faint conception of the magnitude of the undertak- 
ing. The first volume of his "General Stud Book" was published 
in 1803, and when it appeared it was found to contain so many 
things that were not true that the necessary work of revision 
and excision reduced its contents fearfully. In these elimina- 
tions he started in with a free hand, as is shown by comparison 
with later editions, but soon found that his book was disappear- 
ing very rapidly, and not much of it would be left, if he did not 
stay his hand. At this point he seems to have adopted some 
new rule, unfortunately, either of evidence or of date, probably 
the latter, for his work discloses the fact that he declined all re- 
sponsibility for pedigrees as they came to him, of an earlier 
period than about 1780. Beyond that date nearly all the crude 
and impossible things of fiction Avere allowed to remain and are 
thus propagated as true, down to our own day. There was one 
rule, however, adopted very early in the management of this 
compilation that saved it from degeneracy, and that was the 
difficulty of getting into it. In all its history, from the begin- 
ning, it has been a kind of "close corporation," and the animals 
in the volume of the last year are almost uniformly descended 
from the animals to be found in the first. volume. The applica- 
tion of this rule, no doubt, worked an injustice in very many cases. 



88 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

but it made the English race horse a BEEED, pre-eminent above 
all other horses for his unequaled speed as a running horse. 
This general rule restricting admissions to the descendants of 
such as had places in preceding volumes seems to have been 
followed and maintained with a good share of rigidity, by the 
different generations of the Weatherby family, in whose hands 
the compilation still remains. Whatever may have been the ratio 
of fables and forgeries in the first volume, they were there 
compacted and neither the Weatherbys nor the breeders have 
been much annoyed with them since. The plan of the Stud 
Book itself is very unsatisfactory to the careful student, for the 
reason that it admits of no details of breeder, owner, etc., that 
are of vital importance in tracing and identifying an unknown or 
disputed pedigree. While the plan is very desirable and effect- 
ive in placing the produce of mares underneath the dams, it is 
very defective in relation to breeders, and subsequent owners. 
Unless the identity of the animal can be traced and established 
by the records, the pedigree is always doubtful. But notwith- 
standing the unsatisfactory plan of its construction, it has been 
honestly compiled, and we may safely accept its contents, back 
as far as the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Mr. 
Weatherby began his work; but when we reach the period of the 
eighteenth century, facts, fables and frauds are so inextricably 
mixed that whatever we accept must be cum grano salis. Be- 
yond that period Mr. Weatherby furnishes nothing but the wild- 
est fancies and traditions shaped up by those contributing them 
with a view to lengthen a pedigree and a price accordingly. All 
that we can ever know of the horses of that period we must 
gather from the little snatches dropped by contemporaneous his- 
torians. 

In establishing his "General Stud Book," Mr. Weatherby's 
work may be compared to the building of an embankment around 
a great field which contained all the race horses of the realm. They 
were of all colors, all markings and all sizes, except the monster 
cart horse and the diminutive Shetland. They had all raced or 
possessed blood that had raced, and they all had pedigrees of 
various lengths and various degrees of reliability. They all 
walked and trotted and galloped, and there was not a pacer 
among them, for the last pacer had disappeared from England 
probably fifty years before this. The antagonism of the Saracenic 
horse had triumphed, and that antagonism was bred in the blood 



THE ENGLISH KACE HORSE. 89 

rand bone of every animal in the field. They were placed there 
to be inter-bred and to produce race horses. Every one of the 
thousand owners was anxious to produce a great winner, and he 
was left to the exercise of his own fancy and Judgment as to 
what cross would be most likely to prove successful, and to vindi- 
cate his superior intelligence. With all experimenting outside 
of the breed practically barred, the instincts of the breed ripened 
and intensified until its representatives are able to beat the fleet- 
est in the world at the gallop, but they could neither walk fast 
nor trot fast. It is doubtful whether any person in the world 
has ever seen a true-bred race horse that could trot a mile in 
four minutes. At this gait they show no ajjtness nor speed what- 
ever. By breeding to fit the modern methods of racing, the 
speed of the race horse has been greatly increased, for short dis- 
tances, but his stamina and endurance no longer command ad- 
miration as in former generations. 

In the latter half of the last century there were a good many 
•excellent trotters in England, but the further we get away from 
the blood of the old English pacer, the fewer the trotters we 
find, until at last there are none at all. It seems to be true of 
all countries that where there are no pacers there are no trot- 
ters. It was not the purpose nor wish of the English people to 
banish the trotter, but when the pacer was banished the trotter 
soon followed him. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE AMEKICAN RACE HORSE. 

Antiquity of American racing — First race course at Hempstead Plain, 1665 — 
Racing in Virginia, 1677 — Conditions of early races — Early so-called 
Arabian importations — The marvelous tradition of Lindsay's "Arabian" — 
English race horses first imported about 1750 — The old colonial stock as a 
basis — First American turf literature — Skinner's American Turf lleginter 
and Spoi'tinff Magazine, 1829 — CadwalladerR. Q'0\6.en's Sporting Magazine 
short-lived but valuable — The original Spirit of the Times — Porter's^ 
Fpint of the Tiines — Wilkes' Spirit of the Times, 1859 — Edgar's Stud Book 
— Wallace's Stud Book — Bruce's Stud Book — Their history, methods, and 
value — Summing up results, showing that success has followed breeding 
to individuals and families that could run and not to individuals and 
families that could not run, whatever their blood. 

Horses were kept for running, and horse racing was a com- 
mon amusement in some of the American Colonies for about a 
hundred years before the first English race horses were imported. 
This embraces a century of horse history that, hitherto, has been 
practically unexplored and unknown. For the details of what I 
have been able to glean of this neglected and unknown ceiltury 
my readers are referred to the chapters on the different colonies. 
The first racing in this country of which we have any historical 
knowledge was organized by Covernor Nicolls. In 1664 the 
Dutch surrendered the province of New Netherlands to the Eng- 
lish, and the next autumn, 1665, the new race course at Hemp- 
stead Plains was inaugurated by the new governor of the colony. 
This course was named Newmarket, after the famous English 
course, and Governor Nicolls' successors continued to offer 
purses on this course for many years, and after a time there were 
two regular meetings held there, spring and autumn. Owing to 
the distance of this course from the city, other courses, near at 
hand, were soon constructed and racing of all kinds and at all 
gaits held high carnival. The principal prizes were called "Sub- 
scription Purses," the distance almost invariably two miles, and 
the weight carried ten stone. The horses that ran were known 



THE AMEKICAX RACE HOK«E. 91 

as "Dutch horses," and were descended from the original stock 
brought from Utrecht, in Holland. They were larger than the 
English horses, and brought better prices, although the latter 
were esteemed more highly for their saddle gaits. I think the 
Dutch horses, originally, had no natural pacers among them, but 
for the pleasures and uses of the saddle they were inter-bred with 
the English horses and the mixed blood soon produced many 
pacers. It is probable also that this mixture increased the speed 
of the whole tribe. Thus racing continued with but few inter- 
ruptions and without any known changes in the rules or condi- 
tions governing performances, except that after fifty years or more 
the weight to be carried was reduced from ten stone to eight 
stone. In the year 1751, which was eighty-six years after Gover- 
nor Nicolls had established the Newmarket course on Long 
Island, we find the following significant condition inserted in 
the terms of entrance to the races, for the first time: "Free to 
any horse, mare, or gelding bred in America." The simple 
meaning of this new condition was to "head off" the scheme of 
some "sharp" fellows who were, probably, then on the ocean 
with two or three English race horses, with which they expected 
to "gobble up" whatever stakes or purses came within their 
reach. 

The first record we have of racing in Virginia is to be found in 
the court records of Henrico County, in the year 1677 — twelve 
years after the establishment of racing in New York. For fuller 
particulars of this, the reader is referred to the chapter on that 
colony. The Virginians were a horse-racing people from the 
start, and it is impossible to tell how long before racing first com- 
menced, but probably Just as soon as any two neighbors met, each 
owning a horse, a few hundred pounds of tobacco were put up 
the next day, to make it interesting, in determining which was 
the faster. This racing feeling was not confined to neighbors 
nor to neighborhoods, but it pervaded the whole colony, and the 
people of every county had their annual and semi-annual meet- 
ings, which everybody attended. Their methods of handicap- 
ping will strike the present generation as somewhat peculiar. In 
their advertisements of the meetings, such language as the fol- 
lowing was very common: "Sized horses to carry one hundred 
and forty pounds and Galloways to be allowed weight for 
inches." From this we learn that the tribe of little Scotch pacers 
were still to the fore on this side of the water and that they 



92 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

were just as fleet as the larger horses, provided the weight was 
graduated to their inches. There was one feature in these race 
meetings that will be a surprise to many of my readers, as it was 
to myself, and that is the fact that at most of these meetings 
there was one four-mile race. Smaller prizes were run for by 
horses classed as to size, and it may be noted that there was one 
class "not exceeding thirteen hands." At these meetings the 
distance never seems to have been less than, one mile, while on 
the southern border of the colony and in North Carolina, quarter 
racing was very popular and very common from the earliest dates, 
and it was kept up through the greater part of the eighteenth 
century. For a fuller account of the racing of those early days 
the reader is referred to the chapter on Virginia. 

In this old English, Irish and Scottish blood, full of the pacing 
element, which we may now call "native" blood, we have the 
real foundation upon which the English race horse was bred and 
from which has come the ajDproximate if not the complete equal 
of the highest type of the English horse, in both speed and 
stamina. The English and the American race horse came from 
the same source and jjossess the same blood, Avith this trifling 
distinction — the native mares in England were bred to horses of 
exotic, Saracenic origin, while the native mares of America were 
I)red to the descendants of that native-exotic combination. 
Hence, with the original maternal ancestry of the same blood, 
the combined and improved English descendant of that blood 
became the paternal ancestor of the American race horse. We 
must not forget that this "paternal ancestor" had been the re- 
sult of crossing and recrossing, selecting, breeding and develop- 
ing for nearly a hundred years, and that he was, therefore, a far 
better horse and far more prepotent as a sire than the j^roduce 
of the first cross made under the direction of the Duke of New- 
castle. We must not ignore the fact that while there were many 
stallions brought over in the early days there were also a few 
mares, but they were so few in number that their influence was 
hardly appreciable in the new breed to be established. Saracenic 
blood was touched very sparingly in the colonial days, as even 
the names of not more than three or four have been preserved 
in history. The only one of that period fully identified was 
named Bashaw and was kept on Long Island about the year 1768. 
Like all the others, he was called an Arabian, but according to 
the showing of his advertisement he was bred by the Emperor of 



THE AMERICAN" RACE HORSE. 93 

Morocco, and was not an Arabian. Of the later period and com- 
ing down to about 1860 there are twenty-five or thirty that have 
been called "Arabians." Near the head of the list stands one 
called "Arab Barb" or "Black Arabian Barb." He was claimed 
to be an imported Barb from Algiers, and was seventeen hands 
high "and coarse in proportion." Many other so-called "im- 
porters" were equally absurd and dishonest in their claims, but 
there horses all passed as genuine "Arabians." Out of the 
whole number called "Arabians" not more than five or six seem 
to have had a shadow of riglit to the name, and these exceptions 
were practically restricted to the animals imported by Mr. A. 
Keene Richards, of Kentucky. That each and all of these ex- 
ceptions were irredeemable failures is a fact well known to all 
intelligent horsemen. This motley crew of "Arabian" importa- 
tions came from all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, 
except Arabia, were all called "Arabians," and they were all flat 
disappointments both as race horses and as producers of race 
horses. 

Out of this list of thirty-five or forty so-called Arabian horses, 
there is one that requires special mention, not only because a cor- 
rection may be made in his history, but because I have frequently 
spoken of him as the only Arabian that had left any mark upon 
the horse stock of the country. Lindsay's Arabian, as he was 
called, was a grey horse and represented to be over fifteen hands 
high. The story is that he was a Barb and had been presented 
to the commander of a British man-of-war, when a colt, by the 
ruler of one of the Barbary States, as an expression of gratitude 
to the captain for having saved the life of his son. The captain 
sailed aAvay for a South American port, and while lying there he 
took his present ashore to let him have a little exercise. The 
colt was given the free range of a lumber-yard, as the story goes, 
and in his playfulness a pile of lumber fell upon him and broke 
three of his legs. The British officer was greatly grieved at his 
loss and proposed to put the colt out of misery by knocking him 
on the head. There happened to be an American trading vessel 
in port and the skipper "allowed if he had that critter on his 
vessel he could save him." The officer at once gave him to the 
skipper and told him his history. Yankee ingenuity and thrift 
soon got him aboard the trader and he was swung wp and his 
legs properly bandaged. The surgical treatment was good, the 
bones knit, and in due time the vessel arrived at New London, . 



S4 THE HOKs'E OF AMERICA. 

and the colt was taken to the vicinity of Hartford. Just where 
this story originated it is not jDossible now to say, nor do I know 
that it ever had currency in Connecticut, but it was certainly 
rehearsed and probably believed in Maryland. He was owned by 
Colonel Wyllis of Hartford, and was advertised in 1770. under the 
single name of Eanger, and described as '"a fine English stallion 
of the Barbary breed, bred in England." From this it would 
appear that nothing was then known of his romantic history. 
As a part of his Maryland history it was said that General Wash- 
ington's attention had been attracted to a body of Connecticut 
cavalry by the excellence of their horses, and at his instance 
Captain Lindsay bought Eanger, because he was the sire of many 
of those horses, and took hini to Maryland, where he was ever 
afterward known as ''Lindsay's Arabian." The story of the 
indorsement of Washington made an excellent stallion card, aiid 
it is not necessary that we should inquire into it too closely, for 
the dates might raise a question. The horse passed from Colonel 
Wyllis to James Howard, of Windham, and was advertised by 
him as ''The Imjoorted Arabian Horse called The Ranger to 
stand at his stable tlie season of 1778." Hence we must conclude 
that he was not taken to the South before the season of 1779, or 
possibly later. Then, as now, to catch the popular fancy, North 
and South, the horse is no longer an "English stallion of the 
Barbary breed" but an "Imported Arabian Horse." His cross 
was well esteemed in his day, and it has held its place in the esti- 
mation of all the experienced horsemen as a good cross in an 
old pedigree. AVe now see that he was bred in England, that he 
was got by a Barb horse or the son of a Barb horse, and that it is 
not probable there was a single drop of Arabian blood in his 
veins. This little sketch will serve to illustrate the methods, 
general and particular, that were invariably used to place a 'ficti- 
tious value upon the so-called imported "Arabians." In no 
other department of human knowledge has there been such a 
universal and persistent habit of misrepresenting the truth of 
history as in matters relating to the horse. It seems to have 
been, and still is, a kind of pyschical contagion that has been 
generating dishonesty and a habit of lying in the minds of the 
great body of horsemen for the past two hundred and fifty years. 
If a horse is brought from Turkey, or Syria, or Egypt, or Spain, or 
Morocco, or any of the Barbary States, he is at once called an 
"Arabian." This is worse than a misnomer, for it is an essential 



THE AMEKICAN RACE HORSE. 95 

untruth, and its universal use does not redeem it from its es- 
sence of deception and fraud. It must be conceded, however, 
that this deception may have sprung from bad teaching and 
ignorance rather than from a depraved moral sense, for many 
people, as well as the poets and the novelists, may have concluded 
that as the nations named above got their religion from Arabia, 
so they got their horse stock from the same country, and thus 
the horses brought from Turkey, or Syria, or Egypt, or Spain, 
or Morocco, or any of the Barbary States, are descendants of the 
Arabian horse and thus entitled to the name "Arabian." This 
seems to be the only theory upon which this universal misrepre- 
sentation can be palliated. Let us repeat a sentence or two here, 
to show what history reveals on this point. Strabo says there 
were no horses in Arabia at the beginning of the Christian era. 
Philostorgius says that in the year 356, two hundred "well-bred" 
Cappadocian horses were sent as a present to the prince of 
Yemen, by the Emperor Constantius. These were the first 
horses in Arabia. In the days of Mohammed horses were ex- 
ceedingly scarce in Arabia, and they have remained so to the 
present time. The horse is an expensive exotic in Arabia, as he 
is never used for any domestic purpose, nor for any other pur- 
pose except robbery or display. For all domestic and commercial 
lases the camel is far better. All the countries named above were 
abundantly supplied with horses, at least eight hundred or a 
thousand years before there Avere any horses in Arabia. The 
Moslems got their religion from Arabia, but not their horses. 
This topic is more fully discussed in the chapter on the Arabian 
horse. 

The importation of English race horses to this side of the 
water commenced about the year 1750, and that being the mid- 
dle of the last century it is easy to remember the date when the 
line was drawn between the old and the new elements appearing 
on the race course. The following six animals were brought over 
within a year or two of that date — Monkey, Traveller, Dabster, 
Childers, Badger, and Janus. A few others might be named, 
but some at least are mythical. Of those here named. Traveller 
was the great horse. Janus became the progenitor of a tribe of 
very fast quarter horses, and although he did not found that 
tribe, which had been in existence for a hundred years on the 
border line betAveen Virginia and North Carolina, he doubtless 
Improved it. Monkey was twenty-two years old when he came 



96 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and did not live long. The whole number imported into all the 
colonies before the war of the Kevolution counts up to about fifty, 
and some of these are practically unknown, and a few of them 
were wholly fictitious. Maryland, I think, was first in the field 
of importations, and then followed Virginia, New York, and 
North Carolina. Possibly the very earliest importations were' 
made in South Carolina, but there is not much evidence that 
those importations were utilized to any extent for racing pur- 
poses, and hence we know but little of the doings of that colony - 
till a later date. There were not more than about twenty mares- 
of English race-horse blood imported, in the quarter of a century 
preceding the Revolution, into all the colonies. As many of 
these animals of both sexes were stolen or destroyed during the- 
war, we can approximate with some degree of certainty the great 
reduction in this producing force by the time the war ended and 
importations again commenced. 

Now, we have before us the old colonial running stock that 
had been tested in many a battle and found able to cover the 
distance of two to four miles, and we have also the new running 
stock that had never been asked to go any further, but we have 
no actual, authentic and reliable knowledge of the comparative 
speed of the two classes. There were no stop watches nor 
records of time kept in those days. This much only we know, 
that prizes were offered for "half-breds" for a few years, but 
when it was found that some of the half-breds could run just as 
fast and as far as some of the whole-breds, this class of prizes was 
withdrawn. Then commenced the manufacture of fraudulent 
pedigrees, for, it was argued, "How could an American horse 
beat an English horse unless he had English blood and plenty of 
it?" Hence, when a horse won that fact was taken as proof that 
he was full bred, and no time was lost in investing him with a. 
first-class, pure -bred pedigree. This was a little onerous on the 
few imported mares that were known and named, as in the case 
of imported Mary Gray, for she had to j^roduce eleven filly foals 
by imported Jolly Eoger in order to accommodate her numerous 
progeny, as alleged, and how many more claims were made of 
the same pedigree it would be very difficult to estimate. When it 
began to appear a little awkward to reqiiire Mary Gray to have, 
on paper, more than eleven filly foals by Jolly Roger, it was soon 
discovered that it was less perplexing and at the same time less 
liable to be "cornered" by saying "dam an imported English. 



THE AMEKICAJST RACE HOKSE. 97 

mare." No doubt there was a great deal of sharp practice, to 
say nothing of cheating and lying, about horse matters in Colonial 
times, but those little venialities were only the blossoms indicat- 
ing the mature fruits of deceptions and frauds that were to follow 
when pedigrees would be considered an element of value in the 
running horse, and when every man Avould have the power, in 
fact, to make and print his pedigrees to suit himself. This 
brings us to a very brief consideration of what has been done in 
the direction of correcting the frauds of the past and preventing 
them in the future. 

The period of fable and of falsehood in the genealogy of the 
American race horse seems to have commenced not long after the 
first importations of English race horses. In the first generations 
from the imported English horse and the native mare, it was rather 
difficult for a man to fix up a pedigree for his half-bred colt that 
would show him to be full bred, but after forty, fifty, or sixty 
years had elapsed the events became misty, and then every man 
exercised the right to make his own pedigrees to suit his own 
fancy. This seems to have been the condition of things for 
many years, and while there were a few honest men who would 
stick to the truth, the great majority either made their pedigrees 
to suit themselves or employed some "expert" to make them for 
them. The confusion which ensued was most perplexing, and 
the slipshod manner in which editors and writers on the horse 
did their work was most discouraging. Whatever was found in 
print on a crossroads blacksmith shop door was taken as authen- 
tic, because it was in print. 

In 1829 Mr. John S. Skinner, of Baltimore, Maryland, com- 
menced the publication of a monthly magazine, entitled "77/ e 
American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine,'^ and as it really 
"filled along-felt want," it received a very encouraging support. 
As its name indicated its field, it at once became the authority on 
sporting events and the receptacle of a great amount of valuable 
correspondence on the horses of the day, as well as the earlier race 
horses. Mr. Skinner was industrious in collecting material for 
his magazine, but unfortunately be published whatever was sent 
to him relating to the horse, and just as it was sent. If a com- 
munication was well written, no difference how many errors of 
fact it might contain, it never seemed to occur to Mr. Skinner to 
use his blue pencil. Pedigrees were sent in, amounting to many 
thousands, during his ownership, with fictitious and untruthful 



98 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

remote extensions, and published without any possibility of trac- 
ing the different crosses to a known , or responsible source or 
name. H'^re was the opportunity of a lifetime to "fix up" the 
pedigrees C'f stallions to suit the public demand and the fees 
sought by their owners, send them to Mr. Skinner, and have 
them duly spread before the public in all their dishonest finery. 
The early volumes are very rich in the accumulations of pedi- 
grees, such as they are, and hence very valuable. The magazine 
received less and less attention from its proprietor each succeed- 
ing year and finally it was transferred to the Spirit of the Times, 
of New York, and died after an existence of some fifteen years. 

Mr. Cadwallader R. Golden, of New York, commenced the 
publication of another sporting magazine, that was of very great 
merit, and did much to correct some of the errors that abounded 
in Mr. Skinner's publication. In the controversies which natu- 
rally sprang up he had greatly the advantage of his adversary, for 
he knew horse history and Mr. Skinner did not. Mr. Golden was 
a man of marked ability, and over the signature of "An Old 
Turfman" he made himself famous as a writer. He hated a 
fraud and wherever he saw one he did not hesitate to hit it. His 
publication was a large and expensive one, racing was then under 
the periodical interdict of public opinion, and after about two or 
three years, and greatly to the loss and misfortune of the truths 
of horse history, the publication was discontinued. The weekly 
press had no representative in the field of ''horse literature and 
sporting subjects" until early in the thirties, when the Spirit of 
the Times was founded by William T. Porter. The conception 
of a weekly paper devoted to all kinds of sports, such as hunting, 
fishing, racing, gaming, etc., was not only new in this country, 
but it was brilliant. Mr. Porter was not only a gentleman in his 
appearance and manners, but he had fine social qualities and was 
a writer of ability and polish. Such a personage would naturally 
gather about him friends and correspondents that were congenial, 
and very soon 7%e Sjnrit of the Times became noted as the organ 
of a great body of educated men who loved sport and enjoyed 
wit. It was the only publication of its kind on the continent, 
and it soon obtained a very wide circulation. Mr. Porter knew 
very little of horses, either theoretically or practically, but ho 
was a ready adapter and wrote some fine descriptions of famous 
racing contests. His habits were sportive rather than indus- 
trious, hence he left nothing behind him of value to his friend? 



THE AMEKICAN KACE HORSE. 99 

or to the world except the mere fact that he was the founder of 
the first si3orting paper in this countr3^ In course of time the 
paper with all its belongings became the property of John 
Richards, the former pressman, and Mr. Porter had to look for a 
living wherever he could find it. Mr. George Wilkes then took 
him under his wing, and started a new sporting paper called 
Porter^s Spirit of the Times. The use of this name carried 
with it the support of a good many friends, but as he was not 
able to write anything, practically, for the new paper, from its 
very commencement in September, 1856, it failed to yield any 
support to Mr. Porter, and not much to Mr. Wilkes and his 
partners. Litigation arose and Mr. Wilkes finally withdrcAV from 
Porter's Spirit of the Times^ and started }filhes' Spirit of the 
the Times in September, 1859. We then had three sporting 
papers all claiming to be the original and only legitimate Spirit 
of the Times. Among their readers they were distinguished as 
the Old Spirit., Porter'^s Spirit, and Wilkes' Spirit. The 
circulation of the Old Spirit was largely in the Southern 
States, and the war destroyed it, in 1861. Porter's Spirit hav- 
ing but little money and still less brains, died about the same 
time. This left Mr. Wilkes in open possession of the field, and 
his remarkably trenchant articles on the conduct of the war 
gave Wilkes' Spirit of the Times a very wide circulation, even 
among those who cared nothing for sporting matters. At the 
same time he was fortunate in securing the services of Mr. 
Charles J. Foster, an able writer on horse subjects, and a very 
industrious and capable man in managing and discussing affairs 
connected with the horse. Some years later, Mr. Wilkes dropped 
his own name from the title of his paper, and not long afterward 
he added twenty-five or thirty years to its age by changing the 
numbers so as to cover the period of the original Spirit of the 
limes founded by William T. Porter. The old sporting publica- 
tions, one and all, maintained the view, so far as they ever had 
any view to maintain, that all that was of any value in the 
American horse, for whatever purpose, had come down to us 
from the Arabian through the English race horse. Their value, 
therefore, consists wholly in the naked statistics which they con- 
tain. 

The first attempt made in this country, in the direction of 
publishing a stud book of American race horses, was the product 
of Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, an eccentric and apparently not well- 



100 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

balanced Irishman, who was a resident of North Carolina. This 
book, which purported to be a "first" volume, was very remarka- 
ble in many respects, two or three of which I will enumerate. 
The prevailing absence of dates and all means by which the truth 
or falsity of a pedigree could be determined; the astounding 
number of crosses given, even to the immediate descendants of 
imported sires; the multitude of animals never heard of before 
nor since, with pedigrees extended a dozen crosses; the absence 
of many animals that everybody had heard of. This book had 
been in print about thirty years before I ever saw it, and the first 
impression it made on my mind was that the author was "clean 
daft." At the same time, through all his work there was a 
"method in his madness," going to show the care he had taken to 
exclude or suppress any little fact that might lead to detection 
and exposure. As an illustration of his methods I will take the 
following pedigree, at random, as given by him and copied, 
literally, by Mr. Bruce, following the particular form of the 
latter: 

CENTAUR, b. h. foaled 1767, bred by ; owned in Vir- 
ginia, got by imported Stirling (Evans') (foaled 1762). 

1st dam by imp. Aristotle (imported 1764). 

2d dam by imp. Dotterel. 

3d dam by imp. David (imported 1763). 

4th dam by imp. Eanter (imported 1762). 

5th dam by imp. Othello (imported 1755). 

6th dam by imp. Childers (imported 1761). 

7th dam an imported, thoroughbred mare. 
Now, what do we know about this pedigree that has been in- 
dorsed and published, just as here stated, by two stud-book 
makers? They do not pretend to know by whom he was bred, 
nor do they know in what part of Virginia he was owned, but 
they assume to know perfectly well each cross in his pedigree 
and that his seventh dam was an imported, thoroughbred mare. 
The dates of importations in parentheses in the foregoing have 
been placed there by myself for the sake of the exhibit. The 
horse Dotterel, the original of that name and by the same reputed 
sire, never left England, audit is probable this Dotterel is mythi- 
cal. Now, let us analyze this pedigree by the aid of the search- 
light of dates. Ranter, imported 1762, might have had a filly to 
his credit in 1763. This filly at two years old might have been 
bred to David and produced a filly in 1766. This filly at two 



THE AMERICAN EACE HORSE. 101 

years old might have been bred to Dotterel and produced a filly 
in 1769. This filly at two years old might have been bred to 
Aristotle and produced a filly in 1772. This filly, at two years 
old, might have bred to Ev^ans' Stirling (or Starling), and pro- 
duced the colt Centaur in 1775 — Mit he was foaled in 1767. Not 
once in a million times would this succession of possibilities 
occur, but if they did occur in this case the pedigree of Centaur 
still remains absolutely impossible, for four generations of horses 
cannot be crowded into five years. This exhibit fairly illustrates 
the character of Mr. Edgar's work, and being right on the border 
line between the ''native" race horse and the modern "thorough- 
bred"we see just how they compressed the breeding of eight gener- 
ations into the space of fifteen or sixteen years. If we were to 
compare the English with the American methods of manufactur- 
ing pedigrees, it would be hard to determine which was the more 
shamefully dishonest. Mr. Edgar was fiercely dissatisfied with 
the indifference of horsemen to his enterprise, and with the lack 
of support which they rendered him. He went forward with his 
second volume and professed to have completed it, but announced 
that it should never be put in type until the horsemen of the 
country should assist and support him. In the event of their 
failing to do so he threatened to sink his manuscript twenty feet 
deep in the center of the Dismal Swamp, where no mortal would 
ever find it. The second volume never appeared, and it is to be 
hoped he carried out his threat. 

For the second attempt at compiling a stud book of American 
Eace Horses I must, myself, plead guilty. Some time in the "fif- 
ties" I came into posssesion oi a number of volumes of the "old" 
Spirit of the Times, Skinner's American Turf Register, three 
or four volumes of the "English Stud Book" and a large number of 
volumes of the English SiJorting Magazine. As I was then dab- 
bling slightly around the edges of "horse literature," I found 
this little nucleus of a library very convenient, but very unsatis- 
factory in answering questions that came to me, and which an 
•official position seemed to require that I should be able to answer. 
AVhen asked for the pedigrees of other domestic animals I could 
take down the Herd Books of the different leading breeds and 
give precise information, but when asked about the pedigree of a 
horse, unless he was greatly distinguished as a racer, days of solid 
labor might be expended on the one question and then not dis- 
cover the information sought. It was, perhaps, ten years after 



102 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

this time before I ever saw or heard of the misbegotten and fool- 
ish compilation of pedigrees made by Edgar. For some years 
this labor of compilation was prosecuted at odd hours, for my 
own personal use and satisfaction, and without the remotest pur- 
pose of ever publishing a stud book. As I plodded my way 
along, finding what I supposed to be a fact here a^id another 
there, and often conflicting, I found myself invariably accepting 
what was longest as a pedigree, as this feature seemed to be evi- 
dence not only of completeness, but of truthfulness at the same 
time. As my gleanings grew in volume my interest in what I 
was doing became more absorbing and intense, and when I had com- 
pleted the search of every page and paragraph of my published 
sources of information, up to the close of the year 1839, I found I 
had enough matter for a large volume. About this time I came 
into possession of a copy of "Edgar's Stud Book" — and I was 
greatly perplexed to know what to do with it. The copyright 
was dead and it contained a good many unimportant and utterly 
unknown things that I had not met with in all my gleanings. 
Under these circumstances and considering the fact that it 
abounded in the crudest uncertainties, to call them by no harsher 
name, I concluded to use his work in all cases where I did not 
have a pedigree from other sources, to cut off all imaginary ex- 
tensions and to insert his name, in every case, as the source of in- 
formation and responsibility. The work then went to press and 
the first volume of "Wallace's American Stud Book" made its ap- 
Dcarance in 1871. The time and labor expended on the first 
volume made me quite familiar with the leading performers of 
the several generations embraced therein, and the work on the 
second volume went forward with more ease and rapidity, and in 
1871 I had completed the gleaning of all publications relating to 
the race horse, up to the close of 1870. 

This second volume, being about the size of the first, was com- 
pleted and put in due form for the compositor, but never was 
published. The reason why it was never published may not be 
without interest to the student of horse genealogy, and I will, in 
a few words, state that reason. Side by side with the progress 
of the second volume of the runners, I was carrying forward a care- 
ful investigation of the lineage of the early trotters and their pro- 
genitors. As there were no trotting records giving pedigrees, I 
was compelled to go back to the breeders as the only source of 
reliable information. When I obtained this from intelligent and 



THE AMERICAN RACE HORSE. 103 

reputable people I accepted the information and stood by it as 
the truth; and when I came to compare it with the representa- 
tions of pedigree made in advertisements of some stallion scion 
of the family, the truth began to dawn upon me that advertise- 
ments, whether in newspapers or on crossroads blacksmith-shop 
doors, with scarcely an exception, were made up of statements 
that were utterly false and fictitious. They were made up for 
the single purpose of securing patronage, and generally traced in 
different directions to famous and well-known horses. The ficti- 
tious extensions of stallion advertisements have served as the 
basis for the fictitious extensions of families and tribes. When I 
came to compare the extensions of trotting pedigrees with run- 
ning pedigrees, I could not discover that the one was any more 
or less reliable than the other. They rested on precisely the 
same basis of stallion pedigrees, and no difference whether they 
appeared in Mr. Skinner's Ttirf Register or in a big poster, there 
was no censorship, and they were both in type — and whatever 
was in type was generally supposed to be worthy of belief. In 
one respect the pedigrees of running horses are more reliable 
than the early advertisements of trotting horses, particularly 
with those that raced, for they were required to give the sire and 
dam when they were entered in races, and a failure to comply 
with this rule was penalized. The sires, therefore, are generally 
right, but unfortunately the rule did not require the dam to be 
named and definitely specified, hence any one of a dozen un- 
named mares by a given horse could be represented in after years 
as the dam of that particular horse. Here commenced the 
trouble in the unnamed and untraced mares that never have 
been nor ever can be identified. On a careful and sorrowful 
review of my work of many years I found that I had been work- 
ing on a wrong basis from the start. Instead of discovering and 
arranging a great many valuable truths, as I supposed, I had de- 
voted years to perpetuating thousands and thousands of fictions 
in these unknown, unnamed, and unidentified dams. This is the 
reason the second volume of "Wallace's American Stud Book" 
never was published. The only benefit I ever derived from the 
work was in its educational aspects. The work made me familiar 
with the early running-horse history of this country and of Eng- 
land, and taught me what so many horsemen should learn — that 
a truth is always better than a lie. The more carefully and thor- 
oughly I went into the origin, lineage and history of what we 



104 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

may call the modem race horse, the more evident it became to 
my mind that the great mass of the running horses of our own 
generation are carrying, in their pedigrees, the frauds and fic- 
tions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to say nothing 
of the innumerable deceptions and tricks of our own century. 
To accept and propagate these untruths is simply to, in a man- 
ner, indorse them, and an attempt to eliminate them would in- 
voke the clamors of a continent. Hence, more than twenty years 
ago, I washed my hands of all responsibility for the pedigrees of 
English race horses, and turned my attention to establishing the 
lineage of the American trotter, on sure foundations, and build- 
ing him up into a breed. 

The third attempt at compiling the pedigrees of running-bred 
horses was made by Mr. Sanders D. Bruce, of New York, and as 
it followed Edgar and Wallace, it was made up chiefly of what he 
found in these works. The conscienceless fictions of Edgar were 
accepted without hesitation or remorse, and the central aim 
seemed to be to make every pedigree as long as possible, whether 
true or false. No fictitious stallion advertisement was ever too 
absurd to serve as a basis for the pedigrees of all his kindred. 
Mr. Bruce accepted everything and rejected nothing, and it is 
not probable he ever investigated a pedigree in his life. His 
rule of action seems to have been to please his customers, and to 
rcrupulously avoid all public discussions of pedigrees. This was 
the politic course to pursue, for any attempt to defend the mon- 
strosities it contained would have wiped it out of existence very 
quickly. Bruce's Stud Book seems to have been supported by a 
few individuals, from the beginning, as a kind of eleemosynary 
institution, and it is not likely it will ever rise above that condi- 
tion. 

The substantial correctness of the generations extending 
back for a period of sixty or eighty years, and in some cases 
even a little further, is a very valuable contribution to our store 
of knowledge in this department of industry, but, unfortunately, 
the generations beyond those that may be classed as recent very 
largely rest upon foundations that are fictitious and fraudu- 
lent. 

These fictions and frauds are so general and common in 
the remote extensions on the female side of the j^edigree that 
when we find a string of ten or perhaps twenty dams and not one 



THE AMERICAN" KACE HORSE, 105 

of them Darned, known or identified until we strike the twenty- 
first, and she described as "thoroughbred, imported mare," we 
know that this is the work of the professional "pedigree maker," 
and not more than once in a hundred times will we be mistaken. 
This is alike true of both English and American pedigrees of 
race horses. The modern crosses are comparatively honest, but 
the remote extensions, through the maternal lines, in both coun- 
tries are chiefly the products of a venal imagination. 

There are some foundation truths in the history and develop- 
ment of the English and American race horse — for they are both 
one in blood — to which I must briefly advert before dismissing 
this topic. In announcing the conclusions which I have reached, 
I am fully conscious that I will come in contact with pre-con- 
ceived opinions that have been very prevalent, if not universal, 
for at least two centuries. 

1. "There were race horses in England that had been racing and 
breeding for centuries before the first Saracenic horse was 
brought there, and it was not an uncommon thing for the native 
to beat the exotic, when he first arrived. There had been racing 
in America, by what we will call the native stock — but they were 
all English and Dutch— for about one hundred years before the 
first English race horse reached this country. 

2. These horses had been selected with care and bred for cen- 
turies with more or less intelligence, with the single purpose of 
increasing their speed. During those centuries there were not 
so many writers on biology, heredity, etc., as we have now, but 
the old aphorism, "Like begets like" — a complete epitome of all 
science on this subject — was just as well known and as universally 
believed a thousand years ago as it is to-day. We may, there- 
fore, safely conclude that at the close of the sixteenth century 
there were many native English horses, descended from lines and 
tribes that had been selected, raced and bred for generations, 
that were fully the equals of the best of the exotics, that were 
brought in about that time. 

3. The native stock of England at the close of the sixteenth 
century, was the stock from which the American colonies re- 
ceived their first supplies, except the few brought from Utrecht, 
in Holland, to the Dutch colonists in New York. When brought 
across the Atlantic, especially in Virginia, no time was lost in con- 
tinuing their development as race horses, which was carried for- 



106 THE HORSE OF AMERICAo 

ward for nearly one hundred years before the first English race 
horse was imported for their improvement. Their regular racing 
was at all distances, up to four miles. 

4. On this basis of the native English blood, common to both 
countries, the breed of English and American race horses was 
built up. The foreign elements brought into England were 
chiefly from the Barbary States and from Turkey. This exotic 
blood certainly had a very marked effect upon the horse stock of 
Britain, but it cannot be said, with certainty, that it increased 
the speed of the race horse. All the experiences of the past 
hundred years with these foreign strains have gone to show that 
instead of increasing the speed they have retarded it. 

5. The list of the foundation stock of the English race horse as 
given by Mr. AVeatherby, in the first volume of the English Stud 
Book, and reproduced in the preceding chapter, is worthy of very 
careful study, especially by those who seem to think that the 
English race horse is descended, without admixture, from the 
Arabian horse. The striking feature of that list is the overwhelm- 
ing preponderance of other blood than the Arabian, even if we 
accept all that is called Arabian as genuine. Mr. Darley's horse, 
called an Arabian, and Lord Godolphiu's horse, called an Arabian, 
count for more than all the others put together, in the make-up 
of the English race horse. Mr. Darley's horse came from a region 
remote from Arabia and where a thousand good horses are bred 
for one in Arabia, and should be called a Turk. Lord Godol- 
phin's horse — "the great unknown" — will ever remain unknoAvn. 
He seems to have been traced to France, and, after studying his 
portraiture, it is probable he was a French horse. 

6. Taking this list of foundation stock and viewing it from the 
standpoint of the greatest lenity and liberality that a sound and 
careful Judgment can accord, we find that the inheritance of 
Arabian blood in the veins of the English race horse, if there was 
any such inheritance at all, was strictly infinitesimal. This 
historical fact in the foundation of the race horse, showing the 
inutility of Arabian blood, whether genuine or spurious, has 
been fully confirmed in great multitudes of trials, in both nations, 
during the past hundred years. In no case has it been a benefit, 
but always a detriment. 

7. The race horse has been bred through centuries for the 
single purpose of speed. Through all his generations he has 



THE AMERICAN" RACE HORSE. 107 

been the product of the brains, judgment and skill of his success- 
ive masters. Parents were selected that could go out and win 
the prizes from their fellows. The next generation was not only 
the product of running parents, but parents that were from run- 
ning families. Thus grew up the pedigree of the race horse 
under the direction of thought and judgment. Pedigrees are prac- 
tical things and full of winners, and in no sense made more valu- 
able by having some supposed "Arabian" cross away back ten 
generations, that never ran in his life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — VIRGINIA. 

Hardships of the colonists — First importations of horses — Racing prevalent in 
the seventeenth century — Exportations and then importations prohibited — 
Organized horse racing commenced 1677 and became very general — In 1704 
there were many wild horses in Virginia and they were hunted as game — 
The Chincoteague ponies accounted for — Jones on life in Virginia, 1720 — 
Fast early pacers, Galloways and Irish Hobbies — English race horses im- 
ported — Moreton's Traveler probably the first — Quarter racing prevailed on 
the Carolina border — Average size and habits of action clearly established — 
The native pacer thrown in the shade by the imported runner — An English- 
man's prejudices. 

The colony of Virginia, settled at Jamestown, May 13, 1607, 
was subjected to a succession of dissensions, privations and dis- 
asters extending through a number of years. The elements of 
which this first plantation was composed were heterogeneous, and 
many of them wholly unsuited to battle with the hardships and. 
privations of the wilderness. A very large proportion of the ad- 
venturers were mere idlers at home, descended from good but 
impecunious families, and had never done an honest day's work 
in their lives. Too proud to labor even if they had known how, 
hunger and rags soon made them the most unhappy and discon- 
tented of mortals. The governmental affairs of the colony fell into 
confusion, like the people forming it, and we have no official 
record of what was done for a number of years. All that is 
known to-day of what transpired in the earl)' years of the colony 
has been gleaned from the personal correspondence of actors in 
the many strifes that came so near destroying them all. These 
letters are, generally, so strongly imbued with partisan feeling 
that there seems to be no room left to tell us anything about the 
industrial growth of the colony, either in planting or breeding. 
The excerpts, therefore, relating to the early horses of Virginia 
which I have been able to gather from a great many sources, will 
fall far short of being complete, but I think they will serve as a 
basis upon which to form an intelligent estimate of the Virginia 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — VIRGINIA. 109 

horses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as to the 
nineteenth, the newspapers will furnish everything what is 
needed. 

It is evident that the fleet of three vessels which took out to 
Virginia the first adventurers took also some horses and mares 
with them; for the governor and council, who went out the next 
year, in reporting the condition of the colonists to the home 
company, under date of July 7, 1610, use this language: 

" Our people, together with the Indians, bad, tbe last winter, destroyed and 
killed up all our bogs, inasmuch as of five or six bundred, as it is supposed, there 
was not above one sow that we can bear of left alive, not a ben or a chick in 
tbe fort, and our horses and mares they had eaten with tbe first." 

From a letter written by M. Gabriel Arclier, who arrived in 
Virginia August 31, 1609, we gather the following facts: 

" From Woolwich, the fifteenth day of May, 1609, seven sail weighed anchor 
and came to Plymouth tbe twentieth day, where George Somers, with two 
small vessels, consorted with us. There we took into Tbe Blessing, being the 
ship wherein I went, six mares and two horses, and the fleet layed in some 
necessaries belonging to tbe action; in which business we spent time till the 2d 
of June, and then set sail to sea, but crossed by South West winds, we put into 
Falmouth, and there stayed until the 8th of June, then gate out." 

Now, as The Blessing was probably about the average size 
of the rest of the fleet, I think it is reasonable to conclude that 
each of the other vessels took some horses also. In a report of a 
voyage to Virginia, dated November 13, 1611, we find the follow- 
ing statement: "They have brought to this colony one hundred 
cows, two hundred pigs, one hundred goats, and seventeen horses 
and mares." In 1614 the Virginians made a raid on Port Royal, 
in what was then called New France, and carried off to Virginia, 
among other captures, a number of horses, mares and colts. A 
second raid in the same quarter seems to have resulted in carry- 
ing off Avheat, horses, clothing, working tools, etc. 

Mr. Harmor, writing in 1614, in his "True Discourse on the 
Present State of Virginia," says: "The colony is already fur- 
nished with two hundred neat cattle, infinite hogs in herds all over 
the woods, some mares, horses and colts, poultry, great store, 
etc." 

In 1894, in the Public Records Office in London, I found that 
the Virginia Company had sent out four mares, February, 1619, 
on The Falcon. And further, I found a kind of summary of 



110 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

what the company had done in the past toward populating and 
supplying the colonists with live stock. It is stated that they 
had sent twelve ships, taking out one thousand two hundred and 
sixty-one persons, making the total number in Virginia at that 
date about two thousand four hundred. The exportations 
include five hundred cattle, with some horses and goats, and an 
infinite number of swine. In 1620 the company ordered twenty 
mares to be sent over, at a cost, delivered, of fifteen pounds 
each. From the price of horses in England at that day, I would 
infer that somebody was making money out of the colonists. 

In a little work published in London, 1646, entitled "A Per- 
fect Description of Virginia," the author says that "There are in 
Virginia, of an excellent raise (race), about two hundred horses 
and mares." It is evident that this statement is a mere estimate, 
and I am disposed to think it a very wild estimate from what follows, 
in a very few years. It is true that horses do not propagate and 
increase as fast as any other variety of domestic animals, but 
under the circumstances every effort would be made to increase 
the stock, and from what follows, I think my criticism will be 
sustained. 

In the legislation of the colony we find no mention of horses, 
till the year 1657, when the exportation of mares was prohibited. 
Eleven years after this (1668) this restriction was removed and 
the exportation of both mares and horses permitted. The very 
next year, 1669, the importation of more horses was prohibited 
by legislative enactment. From this it would seem that there 
were already too many horses in the colony, or possibly some 
horse breeder had begun to realize that there were better horses 
in some of the other colonies that were finding a market in Vir- 
ginia, and they thus sought "protection" for their own stock. 
This prohibition could not have been aimed at the mother 
country, for the prices obtained would not justify the cost and 
risk of a sea voyage. We must, therefore, conclude that it was 
intended to shut out the New England colonies, which were 
already shipping horses to all the settlements on the seaboard, as 
well as to some of the West India Islands. In this we see at what 
an early date commenced the interchange of commodities among 
the colonies. As early as 1647 the Dutch authorities at New 
Amsterdam authorized Isaac Allerton to sell twenty or twenty- 
five horses to Virginia. 

The court records of Henrico County, Virginia, for the year 1677 



COLOXIAL HOKSE HISTORY — VIllGIXIA. Ill 

contain three distinct trials growing out of horse races for that 
year. In one case the contest was for three hundred pounds of 
tobacco; in another the winner was to take both horses; in the 
third the amount at issue does not appear. From the readiness 
at sharp practice and from the cunning dodges to get clear of 
paying a bet it is very evident that the principals and the wit- 
nesses were well up in all the tricks of racing as it was practiced 
at that early day. How long before 1677 racing was practiced in 
Virginia I have no means of determining, but the next year and 
the next, continuing to the end of that century, the records of 
the court speak for themselves. In these trials I find the names 
of Thomas Jefferson, Jr., grandfather of President Jefferson, and 
also the name of Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of two presi- 
dents, although they were not principals in any of the cases. 

In Beverley's History of Virginia, published in London, 1705, 
at section ninety-four, we have the following: 

" There is yet another kilid of- sport, which the young people take 
great delight in, and that is the hunting of wild horses; which they 
pursue, sometimes with dogs and sometimes without. You must know 
they have many horses foaled in the woods of the uplands, that never were in 
hand and are as shy as any savage creature. These having no mark upon them 
belong to him that first takes him. However, the captor commonly purchases 
these horses very dear, by spoiling better in the pursuit, in which case he has 
little to make himself amends, besides the pleasure of the chase. And very 
often this is all he has for it, for the wild horses are so swift that 'tis difficult to 
catch them; and when they are taken 'tis odds but their grease is melted, or 
else being old they are so sullen that they can't be tamed." 

In the number of Wallace's Montlily for September, 1877, p. 
G84, will be found a very interesting article from the pen of the 
late Dr. Elwood Harvey, on "The Chincoteague Ponies," that 
have from time immemorial occupied, in a wild state, the 
islands of Chincoteague and Assoteague off the eastern shore of 
Virginia and Maryland. The traditions relating to their origin 
are very hazy and improbable, and the most reasonable one, be- 
cause it is within the range of possibilities, is that a Spanish ship 
was wrecked off this part of the coast and the original ponies 
were on board and swam ashore. It is Avell established that they 
have occupied the islands for more than a hundred years. They 
are about thirteen hands high, uniform in shape and resemble 
each other except in color, for all colors prevail. Some of them 
pace a little, and they have rather light manes and tails, and no 
s;iperabundance of hair on the fetlocks. Now, the horses of 



112 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Virginia, at the period of which Mr. Beverley writes, and of 
which I will have something further to say as we progress, were 
but little if any larger than these semi-wild inhabitants of the 
islands; they were of all colors and rftany of them paced. As it 
is well known that the action of the ocean, so unaccountable to 
all human ken, one year builds up a dike connecting islands with 
the mainland, and the next year, perhaps, washes it out again, 
we can thus easily understand how a herd of these semi-wild 
animals may have been caught and kept there. In this way, it 
seems to me, the origin of the Chincoteague ponies may be easily 
and rationally accounted for, without any shadow of violence to 
the clearest reasoning. Mr. Hugh Jones, who, in many direc- 
tions, seems to have been a closer observer of the life of the colo- 
nists than any of the other tourists whose writings we have ex- 
amined, wrote a little work entitled "The Present State of A^ir- 
ginia," which was published in London, 1724, expressing himself 
as follows, on page 48: 

" The common planters, leading easy lives, don't much admire labor or any 
manly exercise except horse-racing, nor diversion except cock-fighting, in which 
some greatly delight. This easy way of living, and the heat of the summers, 
make some very lazy, who are then said to be climate struck. The saddle 
horses, although not very large, are hardy, strong, and fleet; and will pace 
naturally and pleasantly at a prodigious rate. They are such lovers of riding 
that almost every ordinary person keeps ahorse, and I have known some spend 
the morning in ranging several miles in the woods to find and catch their horses 
only to ride two or three miles to church, to the courthouse or to a horse race, 
where they generally appoint to meet on business, and are more certain of find- 
ing those they want to speak or deal with than at their home." 

Mr. Jones here places us in close contact with the character 
and habits of the people of that day, as well as with the character 
and qualifiuations of their horses. It is not to be inferred, I 
think, that all their horses were pacers, but that all their saddle 
horses were pacers there can be little doubt. This is the first 
intimation we have from Virginia that some of their pacers were 
very fast, and when Mr. Jones says "they could pace naturally 
and pleasantly at a prodigious rate," he means that the speed 
was marvelous, wonderful, astonishing. This "prodigious rate," 
in a good measure, balances Dr. McSparran's account of the Narra- 
gansett, which he had seen go a mile "in a little over two min- 
utes and a good deal less than three," and gives strength to the 
statement of Mr. Lewis, that when a boy he had ridden in pac- 



COLONIAL HOESE HISTORY — VIRGIXIA. 113 

ing matches and return matches between the Rhode Islanders 
and the Virginians. 

In the Virginia Oazette, under date of January 11, 1739, we 
find the following advertisement, to which we invite special at- 
tention, a^ it brings out some facts which, inferentially, throw a 
great deal of light upon horse racing, up to that period: 

"This is to give notice tliat there will be run for at Mr. Joseph Seawell's, 
in Gloucester County, on the first Tuesday in April next, a Purse of Thirty 
IMstoles, by any horse, uiare or gelding; all sized horses to carry 140 lbs. and 
Galloways to be allowed weight for inches, to pay one Pistole entrance, if a 
subscriber, and two if not, and the entrance money to go to the second horse, 
^tc. And on the day following, on the same course, there will be a Saddle, 
Bridle and Housing, of five pounds value, to be run for by any horse, mare or 
gelding that never won a prize of that value, four miles, before. Each horse 
to pay five shillings entrance and that to go to the horse that comes in second. 
And on the day following there is to be run for, by horses not exceeding thir- 
teen hands, a hunting saddle, bridle and whip. Each horse to pay two 
shillings and sixpence at entrance, to be given to the horse that comes in 
second. Happy is he that can get the highest rider." 

The first point suggested by this advertisement is that there 
were no distinctions made except by size, and that, at this date, 
1739, there were no English race horses then in Virginia, The 
second point is that there was such a thing as "horse size" but 
what size this was I have not been able to discover. The third 
point is that Galloways were allowed weight for inches. They 
were evidently below "horse size." But they were expected to 
enter for the big purse of the meeting, and they must, therefore, 
have ranked as good race horses; but what did they mean by 
"Galloway?" This is the only instance in which I have met the 
term in Virginian history, although it is well known in general 
horse lore. "Galloway" is an old name of a territorial division 
of Scotland, embracing Wigtonshire, part of Ayrshire, etc., in 
the southwestern part of that country, and was at one time 
famous for the excellence of its pacers, and it is probable they 
were to be found there after the influx of eastern blood had 
■driven the pacer from all other portions of Great Britain. The 
Irish Hobbie, always undersized, was a famous race horse, as* well 
:as a pacer, m.any generations before the period now under con- 
■sideration. The name "Galloway" is only known in history and 
is not to be found on any modern map. I have learned by many 
experiences that the name is very generally believed to be Irish 
and is confounded with "Galway," an Irish county. It is 



114 THE HOUSE OF AMEKICA. 

known that an Irish gentleman shipped many cattle to the 
colony, and it is quite possible that he shipped horses also, and if 
this reasoning be right, these "G-alloways" may have been Irish 
"Hobbies." It will be observed, also, that the distance to be run 
is not definitely stated, but it is fairly to be concluded that the 
race of the second day was to be four miles, and none of them less 
than one mile, and that in heats. Races of four-mile heats were 
very common long before the first English race horse was imported. 

We here have a stock of horses that the people of Virginia 
have bred and ridden and raced for a hundred years, and we 
know comparatively nothing about them. They seem to have 
been specially adapted to the saddle, but they could run four 
miles, or they could run a quarter of a mile, like an arrow from 
a bow. They were not a breed, although selecting and crossing 
and interbreeding for a hundred years would make them quite 
homogeneous. There is a romantic interest attaching to these 
little horses, for we have reached the middle of the eighteenth 
century, and all the successive idols of this race-loving people 
are about to be dethroned by their own act, and their homage 
transferred to a stranger — a larger and finer animal and faster 
over a distance of ground. Whatever of glory and honor, to say 
nothing of money, that was to be achieved from this time for- 
ward was to be ascribed to the newly arrived English race horse. 
But the truth should not be concealed that this old stock 
furnished half the foundation, in a vast majority of cases, for the 
triumphs of future generations of the Virginia race horse, and 
the same may be said of the old English stock upon which the 
eastern blood was engrafted. About the middle of the eighteenth 
century the line was drawn, and there was thereafter developed 
the engrafting of the new upon the old. In 1751-52, Moreton's 
imported Traveller was there, and he was the only English 
race horse advertised that year. There may have been two or 
three others, but they had not made themselves known to the 
public, and I very much doubt whether there was any other. A 
very few years later there were many others, and some of them 
of great celebrity. 

Mr. J. F. D. Smith made an extended tour of the colonies, 
especially of Virginia, before the Eevolutionary war, and he suf- 
fered some of the inconveniences growing out 'of the rising 
hostility to the mother country. In speaking of quarter racing 
he says: 



COLOXIAL HOKSE HISTORY — VIRGINIA. 115- 

" In the southern part of the colony and in North Carolina, they are much 
attached to Quarter Racing, which is always a match between two horses to 
run one quarter of a mile, straight out, being merely an exertion of speed; and 
they have a breed that perform it with astonishing velocity, beating every other 
for that distance with great ease, but they have no bottom. However, I am 
confident that there is not a horse in England, nor perhaps in the whole world, 
that can excel them in rapid speed; and these likewise make excellent saddle 
horses for the road." 

It will be observed that Mr. Smith speaks of these heavily 
muscled horses as a breed, which expression, I suppose, is intended 
to be used in a restricted sense. In the many generations of 
horses that would necessarily succeed each other in a century, in 
the hands of a people so devotedly fond of racing, it is merely an 
exercise of common sense, among barbarous as well as civilized 
people all over the world, to "breed to the winner." In this 
way, and without any infusion of outside blood, there would be 
improvement in the strength and fleetness of all animals bred for 
the quarter path. He remarks further that "these likewise 
make excellent saddle horses for the road." In that day nothing 
was accepted as a "saddle horse" that could not take the pacing 
gait and its various modifications. This was true of Virginians 
of that day, and it is still true of their descendants who have 
built up new States further west. 

In the early days, as already intimated, it was the habit of Vir- 
ginians to brand their horses and then turn out all not in daily 
use to "hustle" for their own living. As a matter of course these 
animals would often stray long distances away, and not a few 
never were found. In due time, legislation provided for the re- 
covery of estrays, embracing all kinds of domestic animals as well 
as negro slaves. Fortunately this enables me to reach what may 
be considered "original data," in determining the size and habits 
of action of the early Virginian horses. As the field of my ex- 
amination, I have taken the Virginia Gazette, for the years 1751 
and 1752, published at Williamsburgh, and in these volumes I 
find a great many advertisements of "Strayed or Stolen" animals 
scattered through the pages; and in the second especially a great 
many "Taken Up" advertisements ajDpear. In a very large pro- 
portion of these notices, perhaps a majority of them, all the de- 
scription that is given is the color, sex and brand, with occasion- 
ally some natural mark. As a matter of course these are of no 
value for the object in view. In some cases the size is given 
without the gait, and in others the gait is given without the size,. 



116 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

in a few both size and gait are given. The range of size is from 
one of fifteen hands down to one of twelve hands, with more of 
thirteen hands than any other size, either above or below. The 
true average of the whole number is a little over thirteen hands 
and one inch, and none of them are called ponies. As further 
evidence of the small size of the colonial Virginia horses we find 
that in 1686 the legislature of Virginia passed an act providing 
for the forfeiture of all stallions under thirteen and a half hands 
high found running at large. It provided that any person 
might take up such stallion and carry him before a justice of the 
2)eace, and if he measured less than thirteen and a half hands, 
the justice was required to certify to the measurement and the 
facts, and the horse passed legally to his new owner. 

As to the gaits I find just twice as many pacers as trotters. 
Double-gaited animals, of which there were a few, I have here 
•classed with the pacers. That many of these little fellows were 
very stout and tough is fully demonstrated by the fact that they 
•could run heats of four miles with a hundred and forty pounds 
on their backs. This closes the first epoch in the history of the 
Virginia horse. The fleet and compact little horse of thirteen to 
fourteen hands had had his day, and he was now about to be 
overshadowed by a greater in speed and a greater in stature. 
Much of the blood of the little fellow that could run four miles 
and pace ''at a prodigious rate," was commingled with the blood 
of the English race horse, but whatever its triumphs, the lately 
arrived "foreigner" took the credit. A man would have been 
pronounced "clean daft" if at that time he had dreamed that 
•one hundred and forty years later the blood of this little pacei 
would stand at the head of the great trotting interest of the 
world. The tough little fellow has retained his qualities through 
all the generations in which he has been neglected, despised and 
forgotten, until he was taken up twenty odd years ago, and now 
the names and achievements of the great pacers are as familiar 
to the whole American people as ever were the name of the great- 
est running horses. It is not known how long he continued to be 
a factor in the racing affairs of Virginia, but probably not later 
than about 1760. 

From about 1750 to 1770 seems to have been a period of great 
prosperity in Virginia and, notwithstanding the general improvi- 
dence of the times, many of the large landholders and planters 
were getting rich from their fine crops of tobacco and their 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — VIRGINIA. 117 

negroes. This prosperity manifested itself strongly in the 
direction of the popular sport of horse racing and improving the 
size, quality, and fleetness of the running horse, England had 
then been selecting, importing Eastern blood, and "breeding to 
the winner" for a hundred years, with more or less intelligence 
and success, while the colonists had rested content with the de- 
scendants of the first importations from the mother country. 
Doubtless progress had been made here too, but it was as the 
progress of a poor man against another with great wealth and 
backed by the encouragements of royalty. The English horse could 
then run clear away from the Saracenic horse, his so-called pro- 
genitor, and he was very much larger than that "progenitor." 
We can understand how the speed might be increased by its de- 
velopment in a series of generations and by always breeding to 
the fastest, but the increase of size can hardly be accounted for 
as the result of climatic causes — but we are getting away from 
the thought before us. When the Virginia planter found he had 
a handsome balance in London, subject to his draft, he at once 
ordered his factor to send him over the best racing stallion he 
could find. The action of one planter stirred up half a dozen 
others who felt they could not aiford to be behind in the matter 
of improvement, but more especially that they could not afford 
to be behind in the finish at the fall and spring race meetings of 
the future. These importations went on continuously for about 
twelve years, and until they were interrupted by the excited rela- 
tions and feelings between the colonies and the mother country 
and the preparations for the War of the Eevolution, which was 
then imminent. After the close of the Revolution a perfect 
avalanche of race horses was poured upon us, some of which were 
good, but a great majority of them were never heard of after 
their arrival, on the race course or elsewhere. But up to the close 
of the century they had not succeeded in exterminating the 
pacer — the saddle horse of a hundred generations. 

As a specimen of how absurdly a man can talk and even write 
on subjects of Avhich he knows nothing, I cannot refrain from 
giving the following from what an Englishman had to say in 
1796 about the horses and horsemanship of Virginia: 

"The horses in common use in Virginia are all of a light description, chiefly 
adapted for the saddle; some of them are handsome, but are for the most 
part spoiled by the false gaits which they are taught. The Virginians are 
wretched horsemen, as indeed are all the Americans I have met with, excepting 



118 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

«ome few in the neighborLood of New York. They ride with their toes ju?t 
under the horse's nose, and their stirrup straps Jef c extremely long, and the sad- 
dle being put three or four inches on the mane. As for the management of the 
reins, it is what they have no conception of. A trot is odious to them, and 
they express the utmost astonishment at a person who can like that uneasy 
gait, as they call it. The favorite gaits which all their horses are taught are 
a pace and a wrack. In the first the animal moves his two feet on one side at 
the same time and gets on with a sort of a shuffling motion, being unable to 
spring from the ground on these two feet, as in a trot. We should call this an 
unnatural gait, as none of our horses would ever move in that manner without 
-a rider; but the Americans insist upon it that it is otherwise, because many of 
their colts pace as soon as born. These kind of horses are called "natural 
pacers" and it is a matter of the utmost diflSculty to make them move in any 
other manner. But it is not one horse in five hundred that would pace without 
being taught," 

There can hardly be a doubt that our English friend in his 
* 'Travels Through the States" noted and wrote down just what 
he thought he saw, and when he saw anything that he never had 
seen in England, he was ready to either deny its existence alto- 
gether or to insist that there was some mistake about it. Poor 
man, he could not understand how there could be anything out- 
side of England that could not be found in England. His 
vision, mental and physical, seems to have been restricted to the 
shores of his own island home, and he was probably a descendant 
of a very good man we once heard of. As you sail up the Firth 
of Clyde you pass an island of three or four miles in extent, 
called Cumbrae. At the head of ecclesiastical affairs in the 
island was a very pious man, some generations back, and every 
Sunday morning he prayed that the Lord would bless the "king- 
dom of Cumbrae and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and 
Ireland." The author of "Travels Through the States" was 
evidently one of the very numerous descendants of this good 
man, as they are scattered all over England, and as I am a strong 
believer in the laws of heredity, I can hardly avoid this conclu- 
sion. Indeed, some of the numerous tribe, tracing their genealogv 
through many generations back to "The kingdom of Cumbrae," 
have found their way across the water, and at another place I 
will pay my respects to them. But to return to our traveler: 
there can be no doubt about his never having seen a pacer in 
England, for the last one had disappeared before his day, unless 
an occasional one might have been found in the old province of 
GalloAvay, in the southern part of Scotland. If he had known 



COLONIAL HOESE HISTOKT — VIRGINIA. 119 

the history of the horses of his own country he would have known 
that from the time of King John down to that of James I., the 
pacer was the most popular and fashionable horse in England, 
and that the nobility and gentry used no other kind for the sad- 
dle. He was always of "a mean stature," but he was compact, 
hardy and strong, and could carry his burden a long journey in a 
day with great ease and comfort to his rider. In the reign of 
Elizabeth, he was kept separate from others, and bred as a breed 
on account of his easy, gliding motion, which he transmitted to 
his progeny. At the time of the plantation of the English colo- 
nies in this country the pacers were very numerous, and as they 
were just the type of horse suited to wilderness life, a very large 
proportion of those selected were pacers. The pacers our traveler 
;saw in Virginia were the lineal descendants of the original Eng- 
lish stock brought over by the adventurers, and the awkward rid- 
ing charged upon the Virginians, with some evident exaggera- 
tions, was wisely and sensibly adapted to the action of the horses 
they were riding. The criticism of the long stirrups is wholly 
unjust, as they are just the right length for the "military" seat, 
<and nobody in this country when mounted on a real saddle horse 
would ever think of taking any other. The Englishman, when 
mounted on his "bonesetter," is compelled to have his stirrups 
.short so that he can rise and fall with every revolution the horse 
makes on the trot to save himself from being shaken to death. 
This up and down, up and down, tilt-hammer seat, if it can be 
called "a seat" at all, is one of the most ungraceful things, 
especially for a lady, that can be conceived of in all the displays 
•of good and bad equestrianism. The English have been com- 
pelled to adopt it because they have no trained saddle horses, 
.and a lot of brainless imitators about our American cities have 
followed them because "it is English, you know." If the Eng- 
lish had pacers and horses trained to the "saddle gaits," they 
never would have anything else, and the tilt-hammer "seat" 
would disappear from Kotten Kow and everywhere else. 



CHAPTER IX. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW YORK. 

Settlement of New Amsterdam — Horses from Curacjoa — Prices of Dutch and 
English horses — Van der Doncli's description and size of horses — Horses 
to be branded — Stallions under fourteen hands not to run at large — 
Esopus horse — Surrender to the English, 1664 — First organized racing — 
Dutch horses capable of improvement in speed — First advertised Sub- 
scription Plate — First restriction, contestants must "be bred in America " 
— Great racing and heavy betting — First importations of English running 
horses — Half-breds to the front — True foundation of American pedigrees 
— Half bushel of dollars on a side — Resolutions of the Continental Congress 
against racing — Withdrawal of Mr. James De Lancey — Pacing and trot- 
ting contests everywhere — Rip Van Dam's horse and his cost. 

For several years after Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the 
employ of the Dutch, discovered the harbor of New York and 
the great river which took his name, in the year 1609, there is- 
uncertainty and doubt as to the nature of the settlement. For a 
time it seems to have been merely a trading post, occupied only 
by those in the employment of the company that owned it, and 
without many of the elements requisite to make up a permanent 
colony. At Fort Orange (Albany) and at Esopus (Kingston), 
the conditions were the same as at New Amsterdam, as New 
York was then named. The first party of immigrants that seemed 
to have the elements of permanent colonization about it arrived 
in 1625, and consisted of six families and several single men, 
making in all forty-five persons, with furniture, utensils, etc., 
and one hundred and three head of cattle. Doubtless some of 
these "cattle" were horses, and the general instead of the specific 
term was used in enumerating them. Very little is known of the 
early horse history of the New Netherlands, as the whole region 
was then named; there can be no doubt, however, that they in- 
creased and multiplied. Sometime, probably about 1643, a cargo 
or two of horses were brought up from Cura9oa and Azuba, in 
the Dutch West Indies, but the climatic change was too great for 
them, and they did not do well, being specially subject to diseases 



COLONIAL HOESE HISTORY — XEW YORK. 121 

from which the Dutch horses seemed to have complete immunity. 
In 1647, Isaac Allerton, as agent, was authorized to sell twenty 
or twenty-five of these horses to Virginia, and whether the 
authorities were able thus to get clear of a bad investment does 
not appear from the existing records. In a report to the home 
company, made in 1650, I find the following prices were given at 
that time: A young mare with second foal, one hundred and 
fifty florins; stallion, four or five years old, one hundred and 
thirty florins; milch cow, one hundred florins. The same report 
makes a comparison by giving the prices of New England horses, 
as follows: A good mare one hundred to one hundred and twenty 
florins; stallion, one hundred florins; milch cow, sixty to seventy 
florins. Neither horses nor cows were then allowed to be shipped 
•out of the province without permission of the council. 

Adrien Van der Donck wrote a description of New Netherlands 
which was published 1656, in which he speaks of the horse stock 
as follows: 

" The horses are of the proper breed for husbandry, having been brought 
from Utrecht for that purpose; and this stock has not diminished in size or 
quality. There are also horses of the English breed which are lighter, not so 
good for agricultural use, but fit for the saddle. These do not cost as much as 
the Netherlands breed and are easily obtained." 

From a large number of facts collected for the years 1777 and 
1778 the horses then averaged about fourteen hands and one inch, 
and when compared with earlier data it is evident they had in- 
creased in height. In the gaits of those advertised, fifteen both 
paced and trotted, nine trotted only, and seven paced only. As 
this was in the period of the Revolution, and right in the center 
of hostilities, some allowance should be made for horses from 
other colonies. 

The people of this colony, like those of all the others, branded 
their horses and turned them out to seek their own living in the 
summer season, and this resulted in many losses, and oftentimes 
in much bad feeling. The Dutch were not accustomed, in the 
"old country," to building fences around their crops high enough 
and strong enough to keep out all the droves and herds of animals 
running at large. In the line of improvement and increase of 
size in their horses, they provided that all stallions running at 
large, of two "years and nine months old, must be fourteen hands 
high or be castrated. This law was in force in 1734, and no doubt 



132 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

was effective. Among the many laws for the suppression of vice 
of different kinds, I find one prohibiting horse racing on Sun- 
day, and from tliis we might infer that it was not forbidden on 
other days of the week. 

In old newspapers, advertisements, etc., we sometimes come 
across "Esopus Horses, Esopus Mares," and, for years, I was not 
able to tell what this term meant. The locality of Kingston was 
originally called Esopus, and in that neighborhood there were 
several farmers who bred horses largely, at an early day in the 
history of the colony, and the locality became famous for the 
character and quality of the horses produced there. They were 
of the best and purest Dutch blood, and for what we would call 
"all-purpose horses" their fame was very wide in that day. Hence 
I infer that the term "Esopus" was used to indicate what was 
considered the best type of Dutch horses. There is danger of 
going astray in the meaning of the term "Dutch horses," as in 
later times it was applied to the great, massive draft horses of 
Pennsylvania. They were better "for agricultural purposes," as 
Van der Donck puts it, than the Connecticut horses, because they 
were larger and stronger, but they were sprightly and active and 
some of them could run very well. They had a fine reputation 
in the adjoining colonies. 

New Amsterdam, and consequently all the plantations in New 
Netherlands, surrendered to Colonel Nicolls, commanding the 
British forces, August 27, 1664. Colonel Nicolls remained as 
governor of the colony three or four years and until he was suc- 
ceeded by Governor Lovelace. Among his early official acts,. 
Governor Nicolls laid out a race course on Hempstead Plains,, 
and named it Newmarket, after the famous course in England. 
No engineering or grading was necessary, as nature had already 
made a perfect course without stick or stone or other obstruction. 
The first race was run 1665, and although it was a long distance 
from the city, the presence of the governor gave the occasion 
prestige and there was a great gathering of the gentry from town, 
and the farmers of Long Island. These meetings were kept up 
annually by the appointment of succeeding governors, and after 
a time they were held twice a year, spring and fall. There are 
some very important facts about these races that are not known 
and probably never will be known, namely, who were the nomina- 
tors and what breed of horses were entered in these contests. 
With these two essential facts left out the value of the informa- 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW YORK. 123 

tion is greatly impaired. As it is known, however, that there 
were but two breeds or types of horses that could have been en- 
gaged in these contests, it becomes a matter of interest to reach 
a conclusion as to which were the victors. Mr. John Austin 
Stevens has done some very excellent work on this part of the 
horse history of New York, but I cannot agree with him in his 
characterization of the Dutch horses as being Flemish. They 
did not come from Flanders, but from Utrecht. They were not 
great unwieldy brutes, such as we would associate with Flanders, 
but hardy, compact animals that could make their way in the 
wilderness. Although larger, it does not follow that they could 
not run as fast or even faster than the New England ponies. All 
breeds of horses were very much smaller two hundred years ago 
than they are now. These races were instituted, evidently, for 
the improvement of the breed of horses in the colony, and the 
great majority of these horses were the descendants of the original 
stock brought from Utrecht. We must, therefore, conclude that 
they were not slow, heavy, unwieldy animals with no action, as 
the language of Mr. Stevens would seem to imply, but capable 
of improvement in the direction of speed. No doubt there were 
very many New England horses in the colony, "lighter and bet- 
ter adapted to the saddle," but neither the interests nor the pride 
of the old Dutch settlers would have permitted them to support 
racing for a period of more than eighty years, unless the early 
Utrecht blood was represented. Besides this, the weights car- 
ried, one hundred and forty pounds, and the distance, gener- 
ally two-mile heats, were conditions that were strongly against 
the New Englanders, even if they were lighter of foot. With 
these two breeds in the field, we may accept it as an inevitable 
sequence that the superior qualities of the one would very soon 
be engrafted on the other, and by this process of breeding, a bet- 
ter type would be produced than either of the originals. This 
first step was only a prelude to the next, and that again to the 
next, until the common, plain lesson was thoroughly learned, 
that if a running horse was wanted the way to get him was to 
breed to a running horse that had proved he was a running horse. 
The improvement became very wide and general, and occasionally 
an animal was produced with such phenomenal speed that he 
was barred from stakes and purses. On this foundation, and 
this alone, the running turf was built up and continued for about 



124 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

eighty years, with occasional intervals, when the gamblers made 
it so nasty that no decent people would go near it. 

The first subscription plate race of which we have any trace is 
to be found in the New York Gazette, of September 27, 1736, of 
which the advertisement is given below. The course indicated 
is believed to have been on the Church Farm, west of Broadway, 
and not far from where the Astor House now stands. There 
is no account of what horses won, and all we know is just what is 
in the advertisement. 

"On Wednesday, tbe 13tli of October next, will be run for, on tlie course 
at New York, a plate of twenty pounds' value, by any horse, mare or gelding, 
earring ten stone (saddle and bridle included), the best of three heats, two 
miles each heat. Horses intended to run for the plate are to be entered the 
■day before the race, with Francis Child, on Fresh Water Hill, paying a half 
pistole each, or at the post on the day of running, paying a pistole. And the 
next day being the 14th, will be run for, on the same course, by all or any of 
the horses that started for the twenty-pound plate (the winning horse excepted) 
the entrance money, on the conditions above. Proper judges will be named 
to determine any disputes that may arise. All persons on horseback or in 
chairs, coming into the field (the subscribers and winning horse only excepted) 
are to pay sixpence each to the owner of the grounds." 

Passing on to 1747 we find a duplication of the foregoing for 
the plate race of that year, with some variations. Entries are 
restricted to animals that never won a plate before "on this 
island," and a horse named Parrot is not permitted to compete. 
This race was advertised to take place on the Church Farm. 
The next that I will notice is the advertisement of this same 
stake for 1751, M^hen the weight was reduced to eight stone, and 
in addition to the usual exclusion of previous winners, we have 
for the first time a restriction of the entries to animals "bred in 
America.''^ At the May meeting at Hempstead Plains, the year 
following, 1752, the entries are again restricted to animals "bred 
in America." From this, then, we are able to fix the precise period 
when English Race Horses were first brought to this colony. At 
this time there were two or three other courses on Manhattan 
Island, besides several noted speeding grounds on the roads and 
elsewhere, for the trotters and the pacers, of which no advertise- 
ments appear, and consequently no notice was taken by the news- 
paper press. 

From about 1760 up to the time when the Revolutionary strug- 
gle began to engross and absorb all thought and all action, racing 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW YORK. 125 

received a tremendous impetus, not only in this colony but in 
others. Ten or twelve years before this a very iew rich men in 
Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina commenced importing 
English running-bred horses with great success, and Mr. James 
De Lancey and other rich men of this colony were only a year or 
two behind them. This fancy grew and spread until a great many 
breeders and planters of the richer class had imported stock of 
their own, while their less wealthy neighbors were well supplied 
Avith half-breds. These half-breds were, for a short time, classed 
by themselves and purses were offered and run for, restricted to 
this class. After experimenting with animals bred in this way it 
was found that not a few of them were able to hold their own in 
any company. Mr. Morris' mare Strumpet was only half-bred, 
but she was able to beat many of the imported animals, as well 
as the full-breds that started against her. From this it would 
appear that breeding for speed for a hundred years had produced 
results in this country as well as in England. These experiments 
led many owners of old-fashioned stock to try it, and right there 
is where thousands and thousands of our best old American pedi- 
grees end. The decade from 1750 to 17G0 witnessed a complete 
transformation from the old methods to the new, from the old blood 
to the new, and more than all from the old managers to the new. 
During the next decade, from 1760 to 1770, the new blood came 
out in great strength, and the saturnalia of horse racing grew 
more and more furious. Purses of a hundred dollars, as in the 
olden time, sprang up to ten times that sum, and matches were 
made for sums that were fabulous in that day. One match, be- 
tween Mr. Delaney of Maryland and Mr. De Lancey of New 
York, specified the consideration on each side as a half bushel 
of silver Mexican dollars, and the Marylander had the satisfaction 
of carrying home a bushel of silver dollars. The great struggle, 
in New York, for supremacy on the turf was between the De 
Lancey family and the Morris family. These two families had 
been bitter political rivals for years, and when they met on the 
turf it was for "blood." The De Lanceys were Tories and the 
Morrises were Whigs, and this intensified the feeling that had so 
long existed between them. When the Continental Congress 
adopted that remarkable resolution, advising the people to ab- 
stain from horse racing, cock fighting, gambling and some other 
more slight offenses, on the grounds of "economy," in view of 
the approaching conflict with the mother country, the effect was 



126 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

thrilling and electrical. Every man who loved his home and his 
country obeyed it. True, as I have said, it was drawn in the 
form of advice and in the interests of "economy," but there was 
but one great evil, one great prodigality at which it was aimed, 
and that was the gambling connected with horse racing. It was 
well aimed and struck the bull's eye. It came in the midst of 
preparations for the greatest race meetings ever then projected, 
but everything was dropped and there it lay through all the years 
of the bloody struggle and until peace again smiled upon a land 
of free men. Before avowed hostilities commenced, Mr. James 
De Lancey, one of the first and largest importers and breeders of 
his day, sold out every animal of the horse kind that he pos- 
sessed and retired to England. Thus, as the colonial period 
drew to its close, the brave little colonial horse that had weath- 
ered the storms of a hundred winters and carried his master in 
safety and comfort through all that time, is superseded by an- 
other race, and no one has ever attempted to write even so much 
as his epitaph. 

As the contests of speed considered, up to this point, have all 
been at the running gait, I must not close my review of this 
colony without giving some attention to the pacers and the trot- 
ters. At these gaits all sources of information are almost hope- 
lessly barren of facts and incidents. We know that the running 
horses of the colonial period were the saddle horses of the coun- 
try, and we know that the best and most fashionable saddle- 
horses were pacers. When we connect these two facts and place 
them alongside of the pacing and trotting experiences of Penn- 
sylvania and New Jersey, we have no difficulty in reaching the 
safe conclusion that the same conditions would produce the same 
results as in those two States. Pacing and trotting contests 
were just as frequent and as exciting in this colony as in any 
other, but they were sustained chiefly by road-house keepers 
and butchers, and were never advertised. Matches were made 
one hour and decided on the road in the next. In the "Annals of 
New York," compiled and published in 1832, by John E. Watson, 
we find the following curious, but very valuable, scrap of horse 
history: 

" Some twenty or thirty years before the Revolution, the steeds most prized 
for the saddle were pacers, since so odious deemed. To this end the breed was 
propagated with much care. Tlie Narragansett pacers of Rhode Island were in 
such repute that they were sent for, at much trouble and expense, by some few 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — ifEW YORK. 127 

who were choice in their selections. It may amuse the present generation to 
peruse the history of one such horse, spoken of in the letter of Rip Van Dam 
of New York, in the year of 1711, which I have seen. He states the fact of the 
trouble he had taken to procure him such a horse. He was shipped from Rhode 
Island in a sloop, from which he jumped overboard when under sail, and swaui 
ashore to his former home. Having been brought back he arrived in New York, 
in thirteen days' passage, much reduced in flesh and spirit. He cost thirty-two 
pounds and his freight fifty shillings. This writer. Rip Van Dam, was a great 
personage, he having been president of the Council in 1731, and on the death of 
Governor Montgomery that year, he was governor, ex-officio, of New York. His 
mural monument is now to be seen in St. Paul's Church." 

As New England saddle horses were only worth forty dollars 
in 1650, and this horse cost more than four times as much, when 
horses were more plentiful, we must conclude that he was a fine 
specimen of the breed, and was, probably, bought for stock pur- 
poses. The date of this transaction is a significant fact that 
should not be forgotten, as 1711 is the same year in which the 
first of the two great founders of the English race horse, Darley 
Arabian, was brought to England. 



CHAPTER X. 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW ENGLAND. 

First importations to Boston and to Salem — Importations from Holland 
brought liigli prices — They were not pacers and not over fourteen hands — 
In 1640 horses were exported to the West Indies — First American news- 
paper and first horse advertisement — Average sizes — The different gaits 
— Connecticut, first plantation, 1636 — Post horses provided for by law — 
All horses branded — Sizes and Gaits — An Englishman's experience with 
pacers — Lindsay's Arabian — Rhode Island, Founded by Roger Williams, 
1636 — No direct importations ever made — Horses largely exported to- 
other colonies 1690 — Possibly some to Canada — Pacing races a common 
amusement — Prohibited 1749 — Size of the Narragansetts compared with 
the Virginians. 

In 1629 the London founders of the plantation of Massachu- 
setts Bay sent out six vessels laden with emigrants, horses, cattle, 
goats, etc. These vessels brought some twenty-five head of 
mares and stallions, that were valued at six pounds each and all 
owned by the company in London, except three mares from 
Leicester, that were owned by private parties. At that time 
there seems to have been some rivalry between Boston and Salem 
as a shipping point, but this fleet came to Boston harbor. This, 
same year (1629) Salem seems to have had six or seven mares and 
one stallion, besides forty cows, and forty goats. From this it 
might be safely inferred that a part of this fleet put into Salem 
harbor, or that there may have been another and somewhat earlier 
shipment of which we have no details. Salem was really 
founded in 1626, and the settlement at Charlestown, Boston, 
dates from the same year. The next year about sixty head were 
shipped to the plantation, but many were lost during the voyage, 
of both horses and cattle. Several other shipments followed, but. 
nothing worthy of special note, till 1635, when two Dutch ships 
arrived at Salem with twenty-seven mares, valued at thirty-four 
pounds each, and three stallions. Some writers have spoken of 
these mares as "Flanders mares," but I have not been able to 
find any evidence or even indication that this might have been 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW ENGLAND. 129 

the fact. The records show they were Dutch ships, and that on 
a given day they sailed out of the Texel, a Dutch port, far away 
from Flanders. 1 think, therefore, we are safe in concluding 
they were ''Dutch mares," and they should be so designated. 
Just about this period they were bringing Dutch horses from 
LTtrecht, in Holland, to the Dutch colony at New Amsterdam, 
and it was well known in Holland as well as in New England that 
the Dutch horses brought much better prices in New England 
than the English importations. It is probable, further, that 
these Dutch traders were looking out for a choice of markets, as 
between New England and New Netherlands. These mares were 
valued at thirty-five pounds each, the record says, but we are not 
informed as to the price that was really paid for them. There is 
a very wide discrepancy between the figure at which these mares 
were "valued" and the cost of the mares that were brought from 
England. The English company charged the colony six pounds 
each for the horses sent from there, and ten pounds freight. 

I have labored assiduously to get at such data as would afford 
a safe basis upon which to determine the size and other qualities 
of these Dutch horses. They were larger than the English horses 
of that period and they were more muscular, with greater weight 
of bone. They were, doubtless, better adapted to the various 
offices of the "general purpose" horse than their English con- 
tem23oraries, in every respect, except the saddle. There is no 
distinctive evidence that they were pacers or could go any of the 
.saddle gaits, in their own right. It is probably safe to conclude 
that the original importations would not average more than four- 
teen and a half hands high, and very likely the exact truth, if it 
could be reached, would place them below that figure rather than 
above it. The process of reducing the size commenced as soon as 
they arrived: for the English horses had saddle qualities Avhich 
the Dutch did not possess, and everybody wanted a saddle horse. 
Still the Dutch blood was highly prized, and a hundred and fifty 
years afterward it was no uncommon thing, esi^ecially in the 
valley of the Connecticut, to meet with the advertisements of 
stallions seeking patronage on the strength of "Dutch blood." 
This, for a time, was a puzzle to me, but as we consider the horse 
interests of the region of the Hudson and the Mohawk Valley 
extending eastward and that of eastern Massachusetts extending 
westward along with the current of emigration, it is not difficult 
to understand how the blood of the Dutch horse should have be- 



130 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

come so generally diffused. On the one hand we had the much- 
desired saddle qualities, and on the other we had the much-de- 
sired increase of size without deterioration in appearance. Thus 
owners were accommodated and the horse stock of the country 
was improved by the interbreeding of the two nationalities. It 
is not necessary to further particularize different importations. 
It is sufficient to say that they were very numerous, and the mul- 
tiplying of the stock was carried forward with vigor and success. 
Five years later — 1640 — the colonists not only had all the horses 
they needed, but they shipped a cargo of eighty head to Barba- 
does. From the colony of Massachussetts Bay all the plantations 
of New England secured their foundation stock of horses, hence 
they are here considered collectively. 

The people of the Plymouth plantation were very slow in pro- 
viding themselves with horses, and it was not till after 1632 that 
they had any. It is hard to conceive of a colony like that of 
Massachusetts Bay living and flourishing for a period of, say, 
eighty years without a newspaper, and yet such is the fact. The 
Boston JS^ews- Letter, the first newspaper, so called, in this coun- 
try, was established May 29, 1704, and it lived many years. The 
early colonial newspapers, from one end of the land to the other, 
were anything and everything but newspapers, as we understand 
the meaning of the title in our day. If a boy fell off a building 
in London and broke his leg, six weeks before, it was liable to 
appear as an item of "news" in the local American newspaper, 
but if the same accident happened the week before, in a neigh- 
boring town, it Avas never mentioned. The name ''newspaper" 
attached to such publications was a fraud. 

The following is a copy of the first horse advertisement ever 
published in this country, and for that reason it is worthy of pres- 
ervation. It was taken from the Boston News-Letter of Novem- 
ber 19, 1705: 

" Strayed from Mr. John Wilson of Braintree, at Mr. Havens' in Kingston, 
in Narragansett, about a fortnight ago, a sorrel mare, low stature, four white 
feet, a white face, shod all round, her near ear tore, has a long white tail and 
mane. Whoever will give any intelligence of her . . . will besuflQciently 
rewarded." 

As this was in the period when the Narragansett pacers had 
reached their greatest fame, we might argue that this mare liad been 
sent down to Kingston from Braintree, Massachusetts, to be win- 



COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — NEW ENGLAND. 131 

tered and to be bred in the spring to some famous horse in 
Kingston, the very center of the horse-breeding interests of that 
day. 

Under the date of June 17, 1706, I find a bay horse advertised 
as "strayed or stolen: fourteen hands high, hardly possible to 
make him gallop," and October 28, ITOG, a black gelding "four- 
teen hands high, paces, trots, and gallops." Then in tlie years 
1731 and 1732 I find a "black mai-e fourteen and three-quarter 
hands, trots and paces;" a "black horse twelve hands," no gait 
given: "black gelding, fourteen hands, races, trots, and gallops:" 
"bay horse large, good pacer;" "roan mare, fourteen hands, 
paces and trots." But the field which I specially gleaned was 
for the years 1756-59, where I found the average height was 
fourteen hands one inch, the data including eight pacers and two 
trotters. This, I think, may be taken as fairly representative of 
the size and habit of action of Massachusetts horses in the first 
half of the eighteenth century. 

In 1636 the first plantation was made in Connecticut at Hart- 
ford by the Eev. Thomas Hooker and over a hundred of his con- 
gregation with him. They left nothing behind, but brought all 
xheir domestic animals to their new home. I have not been able 
to discover just how many horses they brought with them, but in 
a few decades they had a great abundance and to spare. In 1653 
the General Court at New Haven made provision for keeping 
public saddle horses for hire and fixed the rate of charges for 
their use. It also prohibited the sale of horses outside of the 
colony. In 1658 all horses, young and old, had to be branded by 
an officer appointed for that purpose, and it required several 
years of legislation before the system of branding, selling and re- 
cording could be so perfected as to prevent dishonesty and frauds. 
In 1674 an act was passed providing and enjoining that all colts 
entire and stallions running at large, under thirteen hands high, 
should be gelded. This law also required a good deal of amend- 
ing before it could be made to work smoothly. The size of the 
Connecticut horses about the time of the Revolution was an 
average of thirteen hands three inches, thus ranging below the 
other New England colonies. In 1778 horse racing was pro- 
hibited under the penalty of forfeiture of the horse and a fine of 
forty shillings. In 1776 a careful compilation of the gaits of the 
Tiorses of that period, embracing nineteen individuals, taken as 
they came, showed that fifteen were pacers, or pacers and trotters, 



132 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

and four were trotters only. As an evidence of the quality of the 
Connecticut pacers, take the following passage from a little 
volume published 1769, in England, entitled "A Voyage to North 
America," by G. Taylor, Sheffield, England, 1768-69: 

" After dinner at New London, Conn., Mr. Williams and I took post horses, 
with a guide to New Haven. Their horses are, in general of less size tljan 
ours, but extremely stout and hardy. A man will ride the same horse a hun- 
dred miles a day, for several days together, in a journey of five or eight hun- 
dred miles, perhaps, and the horse is never cleaned. TL.ey naturally pace, 
though in no graceful or easy manner, but with such swiftness and for so long 
a continuance as must seem incredible to those who have not proved it by 
experience." 

This is a very different view of the pacer from that expressed 
by another Englishman who visited Virginia in 1796. He had 
never seen a pacer before and he was wholly unwilling to believe 
his host when he assured him it was a natural gait and that many 
colts paced from the day they were foaled. This, to the mind of 
the Englishman could not be true, he says, "for none of our 
horses ever move in that manner." (See Virginia, pp. 117-118). 

The most noted horse ever owned in Connecticut, at least in 
colonial days, was the horse named and known in later times as 
Lindsay's Arabian. When I was younger I accepted the marvel- 
ous story of the origin and early history of this horse, of which a 
brief account is given in the chapter on the "American Race 
Horse," to which reference is here made. This acceptance on 
my part of the romantic story was largely superinduced by a, 
statement made by a justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, that he had examined the animal when he was old and 
found on three of his legs undoubted physical evidence that they 
had at one time been broken. This appeared in a reputable 
publication, but when compared with some other facts in the 
history of the horse that are known, there can hardly be a doubt 
that the examination by the justice was a fiction. When I began 
to realize that the marvelous story was a mere fiction my "wrath 
waxed hot" against the people of "the land of steady habits," to 
say nothing of "wooden nutmegs," until Mr. 0. W. Cook made 
it very plain that the people of Connecticut never had heard of 
the remarkable story. (See Wallace's Monthly, Vol. VI., p. 251). 
Thus it became evident that the whole story had been fabricated 
in Maryland and was a kind of "green goods" method for catch- 
ing the unwary. These are my apologies to the general public 



COLONIAL HOESE HISTOKT — NEW ENGLAND. 133 

and especially to the Connecticut public for supposing them 
guilty of any such fraud. The naked truth of the matter is, 
that while this horse may have been imported from England, his 
public advertisements clearly indicate that his owners knew noth- 
ing of his blood or early history. 

The colony of Rhode Island was planted by Eoger Williams 
and his followers in 1636, and the first patent giving it a legal 
existence was obtained 1647. It was a7i offshoot from Massachu- 
setts and a protest against the intolerance of that colony in re- 
ligious affairs. For several years I made renewed and persistent 
efforts to discover whether in the early colonial period Rhode 
Island had ever imported any horses from foreign countries, and 
after exhausting every source of recorded information, I have 
not been able to find a single intimation of such importation. 
It is evident, therefore, that the famous Narragansett pacer is 
simply the result of carefully selecting and breeding from the 
best and the fastest of the descendants of the English pacers, to 
be found everywhere in the colony of Massachusetts. The 
superiority of the Narragansett pacer over all others of his kind 
seemed to suggest the probability that he must have possessed 
blood that was superior to all others, and to supply this "want," 
a Rhode Islander advanced the claim that his grandfather had 
imported the original stock from Spain. Unfortunately for this 
"claim" there were two difficulties in the way of accepting it. 
Eirst, there were no pacers in Spain, and second, the Narragan- 
sett pacers were famous for their speed and value before the 
grandfather was born, or at least before he was out of his swad- 
dling clothes. 

The horse interests of Rhode Island seem to have been active 
and successful from the very founding of the colony, and the 
fame of her pacers extended to all the American colonies at a 
very early day. When the authorities made their report to the 
Board of Trade at London, in 1690, showing what they had pro- 
duced and where and how they had disposed of their surplus, 
they place horses at the head of their products and state that 
they are shipped to all the English colonies on the American 
coast. This statement is sustained by corresponding facts that 
are known in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Trading 
with the French colonies in Canada was rigorously prohibited, 
but it is quite probable that many a good pacing horse found his 
■way to the St. Lawrence in exchange for pelts and furs. But, 



134 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

as the Narragansett and the pacer generally will be fully con- 
sidered in another part of this volume, the reader is referred to 
the chapters wholly devoted to those topics. 

That racing was a common amusement of the people of Ehode 
Island is fully established by the very best of contemporaneous 
evidence, and by the silver plate prizes won, that are said *to be still 
in existence in some of the old families. Attempts have been 
made to laugh this statement out of court, on the grounds that 
Rhode Island was a Puritan colony, and such a thing as a horse 
race would not be tolerated for a single day. This attempt shows 
a great deal more smartness than knowledge, for Rhode Island 
was not a Puritan colony, as that term is generally understood, 
but had for its very foundation opposition to the spirit of intoler- 
ance that prevailed in all the other New England colonies. But, 
what is still more conclusive, the legislature of the colony in 
1749 enacted a law prohibiting all racing, under a penalty of 
forfeiture of the horse and a fine of one hundred dollars. As in 
other colonies not in New England racing and betting had be- 
come so common that the moral sense of the people rose up and 
abolished it. If there had been no racing there would have been 
no law to wipe it out. 

When the Rev. Dr. McSparran, of Rhode Island, made a trip in 
Virginia and rode the Virginia pacers some hundreds of miles, 
early in the last century, he seems to have observed them closely 
and spoke very highly of them, but he said they were not so 
large and strong as the Narragansetts, nor so easy and gliding in 
their action. It might be suggested that this opinion was the 
natural result of esteeming one's own as better than those of a 
neighbor, but he was certainly right in the matter of size. In 
1768 tlie Rhode Island horses averaged fourteen hands one 
inch, while the Virginia horses averaged (1750-52) thirteen hands 
one and three-quarter inches, making a difference of three and 
one-quarter inches in height. In the matter of gait they were 
not all natural pacers, for out of thirty-five there were eight that- 
did not pace, and some of the others both paced and trotted. 
From this it may be inferred that breeders, in order to increase 
the size, had incorporated more or less of the blood of the early 
Dutch importations. 



CHAPTER XL 

COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY — PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY', 
MARYLAND, CAROLINA. 

Penn's arrival in 1683 — Horse racing prohibited — Franklin's newspaper — 
Conestoga horses — Sizes and gaits — Sweedish origin — Acrelius' statement. 
New Jersey — Branding — Increase of size — Racing, Pacing, and Trotting 
restricted — Maryland — Racing and pacing restricted 1747 — Stallions of 
under size to be shot. North Carolina — First settlers refugees — South 
Carolina — Size and gait in 1744 — Challenges — No running blood in the 
colony 1744 — General view. 

When William Penn arrived on this side of the water (1682) 
and took possession of his princely gift from Charles II., he 
found the eastern border of his new province already occupied, 
though sparsely, by an industrious and enterprising people. 
The old Swedish colonists as well as a sprinkling of Englishmen 
and other nationalities had been there for a good many years, and 
were beginning to get the necessaries as well as the comforts of 
life about them. For their numbers, they had a fair supply of 
horses, cattle,, sheep, and swine; and the growing of cereals and 
fruits of all kinds showed encouraging progress, with the 
promise of plenty. The new proprietor was gladly welcomed 
and his rule proved kindly and beneficent. In a letter to Lord 
Ormonde, after his arrival, Mr. Penn, in describing the condition 
of things in his new colony, says: "The horses are not very hand- 
some, but good." The public affairs of Penn's grant, before his 
arrival, had been administered in the name of the Duke of York, 
from about the time New Amsterdam had surrendered to the 
English, and hence we find sundry regulations with regard to 
the horse in force before that event. 

The first of these, having the efficacy of law, was in the year 
1676, requiring all horses to be branded, and officers appointed 
to do the branding and keep a record of the fact. Besides the 
individual brands, each town had its own brand that had to be 
applied ,and by this double marking it was supposed that strays 



136 THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 

could be identified with certainty. Another provision was that 
no mares should be exported to Virginia or Barbadoes or other 
foreign plantations. Again, every owner was supjiosed to keep 
a certain number of horses at home, for daily use, and he was 
allowed to keep twice that number running at large. In 1682 no 
stone horse under thirteen and one-half hands high was allowed 
to run at large. This was afterward changed to thirteen hands. 
In 1724 this law was revised and re-enacted so that colts "of 
comely proportions" and not more than one year and a half old, 
if thirteen hands high, might run at large; but if older than 
eighteen months they must be fourteen hands high or suffer the 
penalty, which was castration. In 1750 horse racing of all kinds 
was prohibited, under a severe penalty. 

In that grand old repository of ancient, curious, and valuable 
things relating to colonial affairs, the New York Historical 
Society, to which I am greatly indebted, I found a file of the 
Pennsylvania Gazette, commencing with the year 1729, published 
by "B. Franklin, printer." In that day the term "editor" or 
"reporter" was not known in the vocabulary of any well-regu- 
lated newspaper office, and for anything of a local character you 
had to look in the advertising columns. To these I resorted, as 
usual, and they presented results that were a great surprise to 
me. Pennsylvania has long been famous for the production of 
great massive draft horses, and before the days of railroads just 
suited, with six or eight of them in a team, for the transporta- 
tion of freights from the seaboard to the Ohio Eiver. This was 
a great business at the beginning of this century and for forty or 
fifty years afterward. The fame of those great teams, the great 
wagons and the great loads they hauled over the mountains, 
spread far and wide, and as a special designation that went with 
them they were called Conestoga horses, and the wagons were 
called Conestoga wagons, named after a creek in Lancaster County, 
Pennsylvania, where many large horses were bred. There was no 
particular line of blood to be followed, for a large horse bred west 
of the mountains was just as certainly a Conestoga as though he 
had been bred in Lancaster County. The Conestoga was simply 
the horse that was best suited for a big team with an enormous 
load, and he varied in size from sixteen and one-half to eighteen 
hands in height and from one thousand six hundred to one 
thousand nine hundred pounds in weight. These measurements 
he reached by breeding for the one purpose of strength and 



COLOXIAL HORSE HISTORY — PEXX8YLVANI A, ETC. 1'67 

weight. It is safe to conclude that in the latter part of the last 
century breeding animals of large size were brought over the 
water, for we can hardly conceive of their being descended from 
the little pacers preceding them only fifty or sixty years. 

The Pennsylvania horses of the first half of the last century 
were remarkably uniform in size, and from a large number of 
cases in which the size is given I find the exact average was 
thirteen hands one and one-quarter inches. Of tlie twenty-eight 
animals in which the habit of action is given, twenty-four were 
pacers, three both paced and trotted, and just one is given as a 
natural trotter. Here we have two very striking facts — the low 
stature and the uniformity of the pacing gait. These horses 
average a quarter of an inch below the Virginians, the next low- 
est, and a higher ratio of pacers than in any other colony. There 
must have been some reason or reasons for this, and I will sug- 
gest two which strike me as probably effective in producing these 
results. The earliest settlers in Southeastern Pennsylvania were 
the Swedes. They brought their horses with them from the Old 
World, and they were undoubtedly pacers, but I have no means 
of determining anything about their size. This may be an im- 
portant factor in determining the uniformity of the gait, as well 
as the diminutive size. The other consideration that I will 
present is the fact that the pacer was more fashionable in and 
about Philadelphia, then the leading city of the continent, than 
in any other section or portion of the colonies. It is a fact that 
seems to be fully established, that early in the last century the 
breeding of pacing horses was carried on in the region of Phila- 
delphia, with much spirit and intelligence, and that pacing 
stallions for public service were carefully selected for their shape- 
linesss and speed. It is also a fact that all horses that could not 
pace were, in the public estimation, classed as basely bred. 

The Swedes and Finns planted a colony on the west bank of 
the Delaware in 1G38, and as they were an industrious and 
thrifty people they prospered and extended their plantation up 
the river as far as Philadelphia. This territory was then claimed 
by the Dutch of New Netherlands, and they overcame the 
Swedes in 1655, and ten years later they in turn had to surren- 
der to the English. Of the early Swedes, the Rev. Acrelins 
wrote and published, in the Swedish language, a very valuable 
account of his people. In speaking of their horses he says: "The 
horses are real ponies and are seldom over sixteen hands high 



138 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

[evidently a misprint and should read ''thirteen" instead of 
"sixteen"]. He who has a good riding horse never employs him 
for draft; which is also the less necessary, as journeys are for the 
most part made on horseback. It must be the result of this, 
more than of any particular breed in the horses, that tlje country 
excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often made for very 
high stakes." Such horses often sold for sixty dollars in our 
modern money. The question of the pacers of Philadelphia will 
be considered more at length in the chapters devoted to the his- 
tory of the pacer. 

New Jersey is not known to have made any direct importa- 
tions of horses from the old country. Lying between New York 
on the east and Pennsylvania on the west, she had abundant op- 
portunity to get her supply of horses from her neighbors on 
either side, to say nothing of the overflow from Virginia about 
1G69. Like all the other colonies, as early as 1668 her horses 
were ordered to be branded and then suifered to roam at large 
and find their own living. Not much attention seems to have 
been given to the idea of improvement in the size and quality of 
the stock till 1731, when it was provided by law that all colts of 
eighteen months old, running at large and under fourteen hands 
high, should be gelded. I have not made any attempt to get at 
the exact average size of the Jersey horses, nor to ascertain the 
ratio of pacers among them, for we know the environments and 
the sources of supply, and in knowing these we know just what 
the Jersey horses were — a large majority of them were pacers and 
they were not over fourteen hands high. 

The statutes of this colony, enacted 1748, furnished the first 
real evidence of record, with one exception, going to show that 
pacing and trotting races, as well as running races, were the com- 
mon amusement of the peoj)le in the first half of the last cen- 
tury. They were so common, indeed, that the legislative authori- 
ties declared them a nuisance and restricted them to certain days 
in the year. That this was not a "moral spasm," as some might 
call it, that had seized the legislative authorities of that particu- 
lar year, is evident from the fact that, afterward and from time 
to time, this statute was amended, and always in the direction of 
greater restrictions and greater severity. This is sufficient evi- 
dence that the moral sense of the community sustained the law- 
makers in pronouncing it a nuisance, to be abated. It is not 
probable that pacing and trotting races were any more common 



COLO]SriAL HOKSE HISTORY — PENNSYLVANIA, ETC. 139 

or more demoralizing in New Jersey than in some of the other 
colonies, but they seem to have been content with fulminating 
against "horse racing" without specifying the different gaits at 
which the horses might go in the race. Until this old colonial 
istatute was discovered, it was not possible to prove by contem- 
poraneous evidence that there had been any pacing or trotting 
races before the first decade of the present century. This, how- 
ever, adds to their antiquity more than a hundred years. 

Maryland was really the first in point of time to legislate for 
the suppression of pacing, as well as running races, but the old 
statute, enacted in 1747, was not discovered till very recently. 
This proves that pacing races were very common in Maryland one 
liundred and sixty years ago, but it says nothing about trotting 
races. It will be observed that in the New Jersey statute the 
different kinds of racing are placed in this order: "Racing, pac- 
ing and trotting," and I take this to mean the order of their 
prominence. Ajjplying this method to Maryland, it may be in- 
ferred that trotting races were infrequent and practically un- 
known, and hence not enumerated as offensive. Taking these two 
cases together, I think we are justified in concluding that the 
pacer antedated and preceded the trotter in all turf sports. No 
doubt he was faster then than the trotter, and he has maintained 
his superiority, in that respect at least, to this day. Maryland 
was a great racing colony and it was afterward a great racing 
State. This statute did not sweep over the whole colony, but 
applied only to the race course at Newmarket, and Anne Arundel 
and Talbot counties. As I understand the matter, this statute 
was enacted specially at the request of the Society of Friends, 
and for the protection of their yearly meetings. 

With Pennsylvania on the one side and Virginia on the other, 
it is not necessary to spend any time on the sizes and gaits of the 
horses of Maryland, for they were simply duplicates of those in 
the two colonies with which they were in constant intercourse 
and trade. In the matter of undersized stallions running at 
large Maryland was more in earnest and more savage than any of 
the other colonies. For, by an act of Legislature, passed 1715, 
it was provided that any person finding an entire colt eighteen 
months old, or au unbroken stoned horse, running at large, no dif- 
ference what his size, might shoot him upon the spot. 

North Carolina was first permanently settled by a colony from 
Virginia, led by Eoger Green, July, 1653. For some years pre- 



140 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

vious to this it bad been the refuge of Quakers and others fleeing 
from the persecutions and proscriptions that prevailed in Virginia 
at that time, against all who did not conform to the ritual of the 
English church. These refugees and colonists took their horses 
and all they had with them, and as this was but a few years be- 
fore there was an overproduction of horses in Virginia, and great 
droves were running wild without an owner, we may conclude 
they cost but little and that they spread rapidly in the new 
colony. As we thus know whence they came, we necessarily 
know what they were in size and gait, and we need not trace 
them any further. 

South Carolina received her colonial charter in 1663, and the 
earliest newspaper that I have found was for the year 1744, from the 
advertisements in which I have extracted the following data as to 
size and gait. In the first four and the last four months of the 
South Carolina Gazette for 1744 I find thirty horses advertised 
as strayed or stolen, in whicli the size is given, and they average 
within a small fraction of an inch of thirteen and one-half hands, 
and of this number three are given as fifteen hands, which was 
considered, in that day, a large horse. Out of this number the 
gait is given in only twelve cases, ten of which were pacers, one 
paced and trotted, and one trotted only. The foundation horse 
stock of South Carolina was obtained chiefly, if not wholly, from 
Virginia, and the practice of branding and turning out, to roam 
at large, prevailed everywhere. 

In the issues of the Gazette for this year (1744) I find but one 
advertisement of a stallion for public service, and he is called the 
"famous racing horse named Roger," and is advertised as a great 
race horse, but there is no attempt to give a pedigree or to claim 
that he possessed any blood that was not the inheritance of all 
others. Another advertisement is a lengthy challenge from 
Joseph Butler to run his gelding Chestnut against any horse, 
mare or gelding for five hundred or one thousand pounds ''inch 
and weight," the lowest horse carrying thirteen stone. No men- 
tion or reference is made to his blood, and from these two facts 
we may reasonably infer that at that time there were no strains 
of blood, known to the Carolinians, specially bred to run. The 
distance to be run is not definitely mentioned, but it was on a 
road from one point to another, and I suppose it was about two 
and a half, or possibly three miles. This was tliree years before 
the first English race horse was imported into Virginia. It has 



COLONIAL HOUSE HISTORY — PENNSYLVANIA, ETC. 141 

been represented that an old gentleman, whose name is forgotten, 
imported into South Carolina a number of English race horses at 
a period long anterior to this, but that claim has never been in a 
shape that placed it above very grave suspicion and doubt; and 
the claim accompanying it, in the way of apology, that the old 
man would never allow any of his horses to race, did not improve 
its credibility. From the advertisements just referred to, it 
seems evident that there was no distinctively English running 
blood in the colony till after this date. 

This review of the horses of the colonial period embraces all 
that I have been able to glean of the character, qualifications, 
size and habit of action of the earliest importations and their de- 
scendants. Their diminutive size will be a surprise to my read- 
ers as it has been to me, and the overwhelming ratio of pacers to 
trotters will be a still greater surprise. The importance of in- 
creasing the size by judicious selections of the largest seems to 
have been ever present to the minds of the colonists, but not 
much could be accomplished in that direction, under the system 
prevalent everywhere of roaming at large. The little pacers 
Avere great saddle horses, and down to the days of good roads and 
wheeled vehicles they were deemed indispensable. That there 
were race horses among them at the running, pacing and trotting 
gaits there is indisjjutable evidence, covering about a hundred 
years of the colonial period, but there is no record of the rate of 
speed. The pacer was the favorite and fashionable horse of that 
period, and after something has been said about the Canadian 
horse we Avill take up his history and treat it with that fullness 
its importance demands. 



CHAPTEK XII. 

EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 

Settlement and capture of Port Royal — Farly plantations — First Frencb 
liorses brought over 1665 — Possibly illicit trading — Sire of " Old Tippoo "^ 
— His history — "Scape Goat " and his descendants — Horses of the Mari- 
time Provinces. 

Before taking up the two provinces of the Dominion — Quebec 
and Ontario — to which reference is made in this volume as- 
"Canada," there is an incident in the history of Nova Scotia, 
full of sadness, that I cannot pass over without mention. The 
•French made a settlement here in 160^, and named the country 
New France. The settlement to which I refer was at Port Royal, 
afterward named Annapolis by the English. This seems to have 
been a thrifty and flourishing little plantation, far removed from 
all outside associations, except the savages of the forests, with 
whom they lived in peace. The first horses brought to North 
America were owned and bred by the people of Port Royal. In 
November, 1613, Captain Argall, of Virginia, organized a plun- 
dering expedition, and having learned of the defenseless condi- 
tion of Port Royal from Captain John Smith, he sailed up there- 
with two or three ships, captured the place and carried away 
horses, cattle, sheep, wheat, farming utensils, and indeed every- 
thing their ships would carry, and then sailed away to Virginia. 
This raid was without authority or orders, but it was winked at 
by the officials, and forthwith a second raid was made by Argall, 
and all that had been left in the first was carried away in the 
second, as well as some of the inhabitants. 

The pacer of Canada, generally believed to be of French origin, 
has long been an object of diligent investigation, without reach- 
ing any satisfactory results. Again and again I have gone over 
the first half-century of the history of the French plantations 
on the St. Lawrence; examining everything in the English 
language that held out any hope of throwing light upon the ques- 
tion, but nothing was revealed. The trouble was that my search 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 143 

stopped a little short of the date when the first horses arrived. 
The management of the affairs of the plantations on the St. 
Lawrence being in a company located in France, there was a 
lack of vigor, not much growth, and still less profits to the pro- 
jectors of the colony. The energies of the people seemed to be 
directed almost wholly to collecting and trading in peltry in- 
stead of building up a commonwealth from the productions of 
the soil. For half a century these primitive people lived with- 
out horses. Their farms, if they could be called farms, all had a 
frontage on the water, running back in narrow strij)s to the 
highlands. They did their plowing with cattle and their canoes 
supplied the place of the saddle horse, the family carriage and 
the lumber wagon to carry the scanty surplus of their little farms 
to market. At last the company in France, holding direction 
and control, got out of the way, and the king of France assumed 
direct authority over the affairs of the plantation. On June 30, 
1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec, as viceroy, with a 
numerous suite of retainers and a regiment of French soldiers. 
Two months later a large fleet arrived bringing many colonists, 
embracing artisans, farmers, peasants, etc., with their families, 
and a good number of horses, the first that had ever been seen 
on the St. Lawrence. There is a tradition that a horse had been 
sent over to the governor in 1642, but it is probable he was lost 
on the voyage, as the older people of the colony had no recollec- 
tion or knowledge of any such animal. These colonists came 
from the ancient province of Picardy, not now to be found on 
the modern maps of France, but it lay on the English Channel 
in the extreme northwest of France. As it is expressly stated 
that these colonists came from Picardy, it is fair to conclude 
that the horses came from that portion of the kingdom also. 
At this period in history there had been no wars between France 
and England for many years, and commercial as well as social 
intercourse had long been cultivated between the people on both 
sides of the channel. We know but little of the early horse history 
of France, but in oui' own time we know that France has been 
largely benefited by the diffusion of the English blood among 
her horse stock, so we may conclude that if a man in Kent had a 
horse that a man in Picardy wanted, he very soon got him in the 
way of legitimate trade. I think, therefore, it is safe to con- 
clude that the horse stock of Northwestern France and the horse 
stock of England were very much the same in appearance, action 



144 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

and blood. On this basis of reasoning, which involves no im- 
probabilities, we may conclude that the same proportion of the 
horses from Picardy were natural pacers. 

There is another theory, giving the Canadian pacer an Anglo- 
American origin, that commends itself to the unbiased judgment 
with even greater force than the one just suggested.' Various 
writers have talked about the ''French characteristics" of the 
Canadian pacer, and all that, when probably not one of them ever 
saw a horse that he Icnew to be French. The early pacers — the 
pacing-bred pacers — ^all have more or less strongly marked resem- 
blances, especially in conformation, and it makes no difference 
whether they come from Canada or whether their habitat has 
been south of Mason and Dixon's line for two hundred and fifty 
years. When we look at a pacer, therefore, we may as well be 
honest and say we don't know whether he resembles the horses 
that reached the St. Lawrence in 1665, or those that reached 
Massachusetts Bay in 1629. The theory that the French Cana- 
dians got the foundation of their pacing stock from the New 
England colonies rests upon two well-known facts. First, the 
colonies had a great abundance of such horses for sale; and second, 
they were within reach of and purchasable by the Canadians. To 
these two facts rendering the theory possible, we have others 
which render it probable. The jealous restrictions sought to be 
imposed on both the English and French colonists by the home 
governments of both people strongly indicate that there was no 
small amount of illicit trading, and this trading, in the very 
nature of things, must have been between the English and French. 
Toward the close of the seventeenth century the English colo- 
nies, especially Rhode Island, had far more horses than they 
needed for home use, and they did a thriving business in export- 
ing them to different parts. These were just the kind of horses 
the Canadians needed for their wild life in the wilderness; they 
were cheaper than they could be brought from France; the 
water way of Lake Champlain was convenient; pelts and furs 
were a deisirable commodity of exchange, and there was no cordon 
of customs officers to keep the willing traders apart. Of these 
theories we consider the second the more probable of the two, 
and if we accept it we reach the conclusion that the so-called 
"French" Canadian pacer is merely a descendant of the old Eng- 
lish pacer brought over by the early New England colonists. 
Objection has been presented to this theory, on the grounds that 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CAXADA. 145 

the powerful confederation of the Six Nations Indians interposed 
an nnsurraountable barrier to all trade, whether legitimate or 
illicit, between the Canadians and the colonists of New England. 
This objection is certainly conclusive as applied to the different 
periods of hostilities, but the hostilities were not continuous. 
During both the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries there 
were periods of years at a stretch when there were no hostilities, 
and when there was nothing to prevent the Canadian and the 
Yankee from coming together and exchanging what they each 
had that the other wanted. The border abounds in traditions of 
the incidents connected with this illicit trading, but we need not 
go to the border in the wilderness to learn that the desire to 
"beat the customs" is almost universal. We can see it mani- 
fested every day at the docks in New York, when a steamer 
arrives from abroad. The fine lady, with her gloves and lots of 
other lingerie that she has been contriving all the way across how 
best to keep from the sight of the officer, is no better and no 
worse than the "Canuck," who in a retired place at midnight 
trades his peltry to the Yankee for his horse. If the Canadian 
pacer did not have his origin in New England it was not because 
he could not be carried across the border. 

When we enter upon the consideration of the actual performers 
descended from the original Canadian stock, we find both pacers 
and trotters of speed and merit, but in attempting to trace them 
to their particular ancestors we find ourselves in a labyrinth 
from which there seems to be no deliverance. Iii the midst of 
this darkness I am glad to be able to say there is a ray of light 
that illumines much that has been obscure. The greatest pro- 
genitor of trotters and pacers that Canada has produced, "Old 
Tippoo," has been fully identified in his true origin, and he has 
been well named "The Messenger of Canada." He seemed to be 
known all over Canada as the greatest of their trotting and pac- 
ing sires, and many attempts were made through several years to 
give his pedigree, but in all these attempts there were elements 
of weakness and in many of them very bald absurdities. 

AVhen the roan gelding Tacony made his record of 2:27, away 
back in 1853, the performance was looked upon as something that 
would not be surpassed in a generation at least. Then when 
Toronto Chief made his saddle record of 2:24^, ten or twelve 
years later, and it was found that he and Tacony were both 
descended from a Canadian horse called Tippoo, the inquiry be- 



146 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

came quite active as to what Tiispoo was, and all kinds of imaginable^ 
stories were told about him. In the search for the history and 
breeding of the horse Tippoo, extending through more than 
twenty years, many curious and some impossible things were 
developed, and as these old "fads" may come as new discoveries in 
future generations, I will mention two or three of fhem here. 
The first of these untruthful statements to assume tangible form- 
was to the effect that Tippoo was imported from England, and 
that he was got there by Nesthall's Messenger. I never could 
tell how or where this story originated, but it first appeared in the 
pedigree given to Toronto Chief when he went into the stud on 
Long Island. This was settled by the facts, expressed in very 
few words, that the horse was not imported, but bred in Canada, 
and that there was no such horse in England as "Nesthall's. 
Messenger." 

The next representation came from an old horseman, Mr. V. 
Sheldon, of Canton, New York, a very intelligent and careful 
correspondent, who had given much labor to the question. He 
had learned from different sources, that were satisfactory to his- 
mind, that a Mr. Howard, a traveling preacher, had ridden a 
mare from Lowville, New York, over into Canada; that this mare 
was in foal "by a very noted horse that stood at Lowville;" that 
when the mare became too heavy for his use under the saddle he 
sold her to Isaac Morden, and that the foal she dropped was the 
famous Tippoo. The name of the "very famous horse that stood 
at Lowville" was not remembered, but as Ogden's Messenger 
was there at that time — 1816-17 — the conclusion followed that 
he was the horse. This representation was far from complete, 
but as there was nothing unreasonable about it, and nothing 
known to be untrue, I accepted it for a time, awaiting further light. 

The third representation came from Mr. Lewis T. Leavens, of 
Bloomfield, Ontario, who was born 1792, and was, therefore, old 
enough to have had some personal knowledge of the horse. But 
whether his knowledge was personal or only traditional cannot 
now be made to appear. He says that Tippoo was got by a horse 
called Escape, and I will ask the reader to note this name 
"Escape" as we progress. He says that "when Escape was on 
the ocean, the vessel encountered a severe gale, and the horse 
had to be thrown overboard, and he was picked up the ninth day 
off the coast of Newfoundland, on a bar, eating rushes." This 
silly and ridiculous story had been told and possibly believed by 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 14T 

some fools more than a hundred years before the dates here im- 
plied by Mr. Leavens. It is probable it was first told as a joke, 
by some wag in Rhode Island, when asked about the origin of 
the Narragansett pacers. He replied that the original Narragan- 
sett "was caught swimming in mid-ocean, when a ship came 
along, lassoed him, pulled him on board, and landed him safely 
in Narragansett Bay." The vitality of the joke probably had its 
origin in the exjjerience of Eip Van Dam, when in ITll he went 
up to Narragansett for a flying pacer, which is related in another 
part of this volume. Mr. Leavens speaks of the Rev. Erastus as 
the owner of the dam, and the breeder of the horse; but he says 
the horse did not come into possession of Isaac Morden till he 
Avas six or eight years old. The date of his death is fixed by Mr. 
Leavens in 1835, and while he is more definite than our informa- 
tion from other sources, all agree he died from a kick about that 
year. 

The next representation that seems to be worthy of noticing 
is a communication that apjaeared in the New York Sportsman, 
written by somebody who signs himself "Dick." Whether 
"Dick" is in earnest and believes what he writes, or whether he is 
merely trying to "sell" somebody, we will leave for him to decide. 
He seems to dej^end upon Mr. Morden, at one time the owner of 
the horse, as the som-ce of his information. "Dick" says the sire 
of Tippoo was imported into New York in 1811, and was called 
FleetAvood. Why did he not tell us by whom the horse Fleet- 
wood was imported? If there was a man in New York in 1811 so 
big a fool as to import an English stallion at great expense, and 
then send him up to the wilderness of Canada where there was 
neither money nor mares, his name should be handed down as a 
historical curiosity. The whole story is a "fake." 

In January, 1883, I received from the Hon. J. P. Wiser, of 
Prescott, Ontario, the following letter, which he had just re- 
ceived from the writer: 

Wellington, December 27, 1882. 

As the origin of the Tippoo horses seems to be a mystery to you I will tell 
you. Erastus Howard was a traveling preacher in those days, and he traveled 
on horseback. He bought in Kingston a dark chestnut mare and bred her to a 
horse called "The Scape Goat," brought from Narragansett Bay, in Rhode 
Island. The horse was a large brown horse, wnd could rack (pace) faster than 
he could run. The colt was coal black and large, and was sold to Mr. Wilcox, 
who named him Tippoo Sultan. His gait was like the " Scape " some, but 
soon squared oflf to a trot, and the way he could go was dreadful. In June,. 
1836, he broke his leg and was lost. Wilson Serls. 



148 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 

This short letter was a great surprise, for never before had I 
lieard of Mr. Serls. Through the kindness of Mr. Wiser he had 
entered the discussion, evidently without knowing anything 
about what representations had been made by others. His short, 
crisp sentences seemed to be an epitome of a history of 4;his horse, 
Avhich he might be able to give. It will be observed that the 
traveling preacher, Erastus Howard, is still in the foreground, 
and that Mr. Leavens' "Escape" and Mr. Serls' "Scape Goat" 
are- evidently one and the same horse, and thus these two men 
practically confirm each other, so far as the identity of the horse 
is concerned. No time was lost in preparing a series of questions 
to be submitted to Mr. Serls, embracing the sources of his in- 
formation, for although well advanced in years he certainly could 
not have had personal knowledge of what he testified. These 
questions not only covered the minute points in the history of 
t*he matter, but they were so framed as to test the accuracy and 
honesty of his memory. In due time they came back fully and 
satisfactorily answered, and as these answers embrace many things 
that my readers care nothing about I will condense them into 
narrative form. 

Mr. Serls derived his information from his uncle, Stephen 
Niles, the brother of his mother. In 1798 Stephen Niles took a 
band of horses to Prince Edward County, and stopped with an 
uncle of his who was then a member of the provincial parliament, 
living on the Bay of Quinte. His uncle prevailed upon him to settle 
there. In 1800 he was married, and bought a farm of two hun- 
dred acres four miles west of Wellington, where he lived many 
years, and the place is still known as Niles' Corners. He was an 
orthodox Quaker in his religious belief, and for a number of years 
he was one of the bench of magistrates for Prince Edward 
County. When the War of 1812 broke out he was employed by 
the British forces in procuring hay and grain for the mounted 
troops. In 1858 he died, leaving an honorable name behind him. 

At the close of the war the military authorities sold off a large 
number of horses to the highest bidder, and Mr. Niles was pres- 
ent when the traveling preacher, Erastus Howard, bid off a dark 
chestnut mare for ninety-three dollars, at Kingston. This mare 
afterward became the dam of the famous Tippoo, and as a matter 
of course nothing can ever be known of her breeding. In 1816 a 
man from Khode Island, whose name is not definitely remem- 
bered, but believed to be Williams, traveled the horse Scape Goat 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CAXADA. 149 

through Prince Edward County, and he stopped one day and 
night in each week at the house of Stephen Niles, and during 
that season Mr. Howard bred his chestnut mare to this iiorse, 
and, as already said, the produce was Tippoo. This black colt 
passed into the hands of Mr. Wilcox, who gave him his name, 
and he afterward passed through several other hands before he 
reached Mr. Morden about 18:^6, and he died ten years later from 
the effects of a kick. As the horse Scape Goat was brought from 
Narragansett Bay, and as he was a remarkably fast pacer, there 
can be no mistake in calling him a "Narragansett Pacer." He 
was considerably larger than the average of that tribe, but this 
does not vitiate his title to a place in that family. It seems he 
was only kept in Prince Edward County the one season, and his 
owner, not being satisfied with the extent of his earnings, took 
him back to Rhode Island. Thus, the horse that has been 
proudly designated as "Canada's Messenger," was the son of a 
Narragansett pacer. In his younger days, Tippoo paced like his 
sire, but as he grew older the trotting gait was more fully 
developed. 

It is safe to say that the immediate progeny of Tippoo were 
numerous, and it is safe to say that some of them, either as trot- 
ters or pacers, were fast for their day, but it must be confessed 
that we know very little about the way they were bred. One son 
was called Sportsman, but nothing is known of his dam and very 
little of the horse himself beyond the fact that he Avas the sire of 
the roan gelding Tacony, that trotted some great races about 
1853, and made a record of 2:27. This horse had a son called 
Young Sportsman, that was more widely known as "the Sager 
Horse," and his horse became the sire of the trotting mare 
Clara, or Crazy Jane, as she was at one time called, that made a 
record of 2:27 in 18G7. Beyond these two representatives of the 
Sportsman line, I have not been able to go. It has been claimed 
that another son of Tippoo, called Wild Deer, was the sire of the 
Sager Horse, but it does not seem to be well sustained. There 
was a son called Wild Deer, and several others that have been 
mentioned by turf writers, but no particulars of any value have 
been given. 

Warrior, or Black AVarrior, as he is sometimes called, was a 
brown horse and not a black, as his latter name would imply. 
He was a son of old Tippoo and his dam was a black mare OAvned 
and ridden by an officer in an English regiment, known as the 



150 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

Pirst Royals. She was a black mare and after she was sold out 
of the service she was called "Black Warrior," and this name 
was transmitted to her son. This mare was for a long time repre- 
sented as the dam of Royal George, but she was the dam of his 
sire. This horse was bred at Belleville, Ontario, and .about 1840 
a certain Mr. Johnston was moving from Belleville to Michigan. 
He had this horse with him, which, becoming lame on the way, 
he traded to a Mr. Barnes, living about twenty miles south of 
London, Ontario. He was a valuable horse and left many very 
useful animals. Many of his get were pacers, and he was kept by 
Mr. Barnes till he died. 

Royal George was a brown-bay horse, foaled about 1842, and 
was got by Warrior, son of Tippoo. His dam was the off one of 
-a pair of bay mares taken to that vicinity from Middlebury, Ver- 
mont, by a Mr. Billington. This mare got her foot in a log 
bridge and the injury made her a comparative cripple for life. 
Being thus unfitted for road work, Mr. Billington sold or traded 
her to Mr. Barnes. She was bred to Warrior and produced Royal 
George. It is said by those who knew both animals, that this 
mare was a better trotter than Warrior, and from this springs the 
argument tliat Royal George had a trotting inheritance from his 
dam as well as from his sire. To learn whence this inheritance 
came, I have labored assiduously for years without being able to 
technically determine it. The single fact that her sire in Ver- 
mont was knoAvnas "the*Bristol Horse," is beyond all doubt, but 
-as Mr. Billington was not living when this search was commenced, 
it has not been possible to determine just what horse is meant by 
''Bristol Horse." At one time Harris' Hambletonian was known 
very widely as "Bristol Grey" or "Bristol Horse," and this is the 
only horse in the records so designated. It may, therefore, be 
assumed as more than a probability that this was the sire of the 
dam of Ro3^al George, 

When three or four years old he was sold by Mr. Barnes to 
James Forshee, and he was known as "the Forshee Horse" for 
several years. He Avas sixteen hands high, not very handsome, 
but well formed, with plenty of substance and stamina, good 
action, and a first class "business" horse for anything that was 
wanted of him. In the stud, at low prices, he was largely 
patronized, and during the other months of the year he was em- 
ployed in all kinds of drudgery. From Forshee he passed to 
T'rank Munger, and from Munger to Mr. Doherty, of St. Gather- 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 151 

Ines, for four hundred dollars, and he gave him the name of 
Eoyal George, and kept him many years. In 1858 W. H. Ash- 
ford, of Lewiston, New York, bought him and kept him two or 
three years there and at Buffalo. He seems to have passed into 
Doherty's hands again, and died at St. Catherine's, December, 
1862. It is not known that he ever had any training as a trotter 
except what he got from his owner on the road, and there is no 
tradition of his ever having been in a race but once, and that was 
•on the ice at Hamilton, about 1852, against the famous State of 
Maine, for a considerable wager. In this contest he was the 
winner. His highest rate of sj)eed was about 2:50 under the 
saddle. He was strongly disposed to pace, but when he got 
down to his work his gait was a square, mechanical trot. He 
left a numerous progeny with a heavy sprinkling of pacers among 
them; they were generally of fine size and very useful animals. 
Many of his sons were kept entire and that Avhole region of On- 
tario was filled up with Eoyal Georges, to say nothing of the 
large numbers that were brought across the border. He left one 
representative in the 2:30 list, and five sons that became sires of 
performers. 

Toronto Chief was the best son of Eoyal George, according to 
the records. He was a brown horse, foaled 1850, and was bred by 
George Larue, of Middlesex County, Ontario. His dam was a 
small bay mare by a horse called Blackwood, and his grandam 
■was by Prospect. The horse Blackwbod *'was bought of a 
frenchman below Montreal in 1837," and that is all that can be 
said of his blood. He was a horse of fine size and went Avith 
great courage. Toronto Chief passed through several hands be- 
fore he reached his owner, A. Bathgate, of New York. He was a 
horse of great speed for his day, having a record of 2:31 in harness 
and 2:24:5 under saddle. He lefttliree representatives in the 2:30 
list, and among them the famous Thomas Jefferson, 2:23, with 
thirty-nine heats to his credit. Six of his sons became sires of 
trotters, and five of his daughters producers. Like all the other 
minor families, the Eoyal George family is surely being absorbed 
or submerged in trotting strains of more positive and uniform 
IJrepotency. 

It is probably true that Old Columbus and Old St. Lawrence 
■were both descended from the Tippoo family, as they were both 
Ijred in Canada and seemed to possess and transmit the same 
characteristics as the Eoyal Georges possessed, in conformation 



153 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

and gait. Their descendants were not numerous, but so many of 
them were able to show such a rate of speed, either at the lateral 
or diagonal gait, that they left a distinct trace on the trotting 
stock of the United States. Old Pacing Pilot has always been 
classed as a Canadian, but no trace of his origin ha.s ever been 
secured, and it is impossible at this day to give any definite in- 
formation as to whether he was brought from Canada or not. 
Some forty or fifty years ago the "Canadian pacers" were sO' 
highly esteemed for their speed that very many horses were called 
"Canadians" that never saw Canada. The original Tom Hal waa 
purchased in Philadelphia as early as 1838, and was always called 
a Canadian. He was the progenitor of the great pacing family 
still bearing his name, that is doubtless the most noted pacing 
family now in existence. Sam Hazzard, it is said, was brought 
from Canada about 1844, and left some noted descendants. Many 
others might be named, but as they never gained great celebrity, 
and as their origin is not fully established, I will leave the- 
Canadians for future investigators. 

The rich province of Ontario has always been, in all its ways, 
the most English section of the Canadian Confederation, and in 
nothing more than in horsemanship. True, it is now a great 
trotting region, but running is and always has been the sport of 
the rich and fashionable, and almost all the English horses im- 
ported in Canada have gone to Western Ontario. On the other 
hand, in the Maritime Provinces — New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,^ 
and Prince Edward Island — running races liave never been 
popular, except at Halifax, which is a great military station and 
socially and otherwise much influenced by its English army and 
navy residents. It is the only point in the provin .es where run- 
ning meetings are given or where the running horse is at all 
cherished. For generations the principal sport of the people of 
these provinces has been trotting and pacing races, winter and 
summer, for ice racing is very general and very popular, through 
Maritime as well as Western Canada, the numbers of great bays 
and wide rivers affording ample courses, everywhere, throughout 
the long winters. Though there is, through these provinces, a 
generous sprinkling of horses called French Canadian, it is a fact 
that when we write the horse history of Maine we have written 
that of the Maritime Canadian provinces. The best of the early 
trotting stock of these provinces came from Maine, and the most 
and the best of the old-time trotters of Nevv Brunswick, Nova 



EARLY HORSE HISTORY — CANADA. 153 

Scotia, and Prince Edward Island were of tribes loosely described 
as Maine Messengers. For this tliere are ample geographical and 
natural reasons. That part of Quebec nearest them has never 
been rich in horses nor in anything else which the Provincials 
want, or in which they trade. The peojile of eastern New Eng- 
land are their natural trading neighbors, and the city of St. John, 
New Brunswick, especially in the past, the common market 
place; and almost all the earlier Maritime trotting sires trace 
through St. John to Maine, or some of the other New England 
States. It is a fact, too, that for generations enterprising horse- 
men, in the lower provinces, have been importing American trot- 
ting stallions for service, and to-day the trotting stock of these 
provinces is very thoroughly Americanized. While the exporta- 
tion of horses, principally to Boston and Bangor, is one of the in- 
dustries of Nova Scotia and of Prince Edward Island especially, 
almost without exception trotting and pacing stallions in use 
there are imported American horses, or the descendants of 
American trotting sires; while, as we have noted, the foundation 
stock came chiefly from Maine, and in very small degree from 
Ontario or Quebec. In either of the Maritime provinces it is a 
rarity to find a trotting horse that has not more or less of Ameri- 
can blood. 



CHAPTER Xill. 

ANTIQUITY AN'D HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 

The mechanism of the different gaits — The Elgin Marbles — Britain becomes a 
Roman province — Pacers in the time of the Romans — Bronze horses of 
Venice — Fitz Stephen, the Monk of Canterbury — Evidence of the Great 
Seals — What Blundevillesays — What Gervaise Markham says — What the 
Duke of Newcastle says — The amble and the pace one and the same — At 
the close of Elizabeth's reign — The Galloways and Hobbies — Extinction of 
the pacer — The original pacer probaldy from the North — Polydore Virgil's 
evidence — Samuel Purchas' evidence — The process of wiping out the 
pacer — King James set the fashion — All foreign horses called " Arabians " 
— The foreigners larger and handsomer — Good roads and wheeled vehicles 
dispensed with the pacer — Result of prompting Mr. Euren — Mr. Youatt's 
blunder — Other English gentlemen not convinced there ever vere any 
pacers. 

In considering the antiquity and history of the pacing horse, it 
seems to be necessary that we should have a clear perception of 
the mechanism of the gait from which he takes his distinctive 
name and the relation which that mechanism bears to other gaits 
or means of progression. In the study of this mechanism we 
learn the combination by which we unlock the mystery that has 
l^uzzled so many breeders of the past and present generations. 
Some have maintained that the pace is a combination of the trot 
and the gallop, while a smaller number have maintained that the 
fast trot was a combination of the pace and the gallop. It is 
quite evident, as I will be able to show, that neither of these 
parties has ever given any careful attention and study to the 
mechanism of the different gaits. The most simple and least- 
complicated method of illustrating this mechanism of movement 
is furnished in the human means of progression. At the walk, a 
man steps off with his left foot and the heel of that foot strikes 
the ground before the toe of the right foot leaves it. Then the 
right foot advances and strikes the ground before the toe of the 
left foot leaves it. This is the natural "heel and toe" walk, and 
the speed may be increased by quickening the step and extending 
tho stride, so far as physical conformation will permit. Still 




:^ 



K 1 

I-, SB 

o s 



ANTIQUITY AXD HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 155 

greater speed becomes a succession of bounds, the propelling foot 
leaving the ground before the advanced foot strikes it. This is 
running, the highest rate of speed attainable, and in every revo- 
lution, for a space, the whole body is in the air. In the action 
of the horse, with four legs, we find greater complication, which 
I will try to make clear. 

First, all horses walk, all horses pace or trot, and all horses 
gallop. The walk is easily analyzed, for it is slow and the move- 
ment of each limb can be followed by the eye. Each foot makes 
its own stroke upon the ground, and we count one, two, three, 
four in the revolution. 

Second, at the gallop, which is a succession of leaps, each 
limb, as shown by the instantaneous photograph, performs its 
own function, whether in rising from the ground, flying through 
the air, or in striking the ground again. There is harmony in 
all, but there is no unity in any two or more of them, and when 
they strike the ground again you hear the impacts, one, two, 
three, four, in a cluster. The conventional drawing of the run- 
ning horse in action is impossible in nature, and a wretched car- 
icature of the action as it is. As in the walk, so in tlie run, Ave 
count four impacts in the revolution. 

Third, at the pace the horse advances the two feet, on the 
same side, at the same time, and when they reach the ground 
again there is but one impact; then the two feet on the other side 
are advanced and strike in the same way. Thus, the rhythm of 
the action strikes the ear as that of the movement .of an animal 
with two feet instead of four. In this there can be no mechani- 
cal mistake, for \\ the revolution of the four-legged pacing horse 
we count one, two, and in the revolution of the two-legged man 
we count one, two. The conclusion, therefore, seems to be in- 
evitable that the two legs on the same side of the pacing horse 
act in perfect unison in performing the functions of one leg. At 
the trot the horse advances the two diagonal feet at the same 
time, and when they reach the ground again there is but one im- 
pact; then the two other diagonal feet are advanced and strike 
in the same way. Thus, the rhythm of the action strikes the 
ear as that of the movement of an animal with two feet instead 
of four. In this there can be no mechanical mistake, for in the 
revolution of the four-legged trotting horse we count one, two, 
and in the revolution of the two-legged man we count one, two. 
The conclusion, therefore, seems to be inevitable that the two^ 



156 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

diagonal legs of the trotting horse act in perfect unison in per- 
forming the function of one leg. In the mechanism of the gait 
then that is midway between the walk and the gallop there is no 
difference in results, nor distinction in the economy of motion, 
except that the pacer uses the lateral legs as one, and the trotter 
the diagonal legs as one. In use, there is a vertical distinction, 
if that term should he allowed, between the gait of the pacer and 
the trotter. The action of the pacer is lower and more gliding 
which fits him for the saddle, while the action of the trotter is 
higher and more bounding which makes him more desirable as a 
harness horse. In the processes of inter-breeding to the fastest, 
this distinction, if it be a distinction, seems to be coming less 
real, or at least less observable. 

While the essential oneness of the pace and the trot is indi- 
cated above from the mechanism and unity of the two gaits, 
there is a great mountain of evidence to be developed when we 
reach the consideration of breeding subjects, in which we will 
meet multitudes of fast trotters getting fast pacers, and fast 
pacers getting fast trotters; fast pacers changed over to fast trot- 
ters and fast trotters changed over to fast pacers, and the final evi- 
dence that speed at the one gait means speed at the other. Hav- 
ing briefly explained what a pacer is, it is now in order to take 
up the question of whence he came. 

On the summit of the Acropolis, in Athens, stand the ruins of 
the Parthenon, a magnificent temple erected to the goddess 
Minerva. The building was commenced in the year B.C. 437, 
and was completed five years afterward. All the statuary was 
the work of the famous Phidias and his scholars, made from 
Pentelic marble. This noted building resisted all the ravages 
of time, and had, in turn, been converted into a Christian temple 
and a Turkish mosque. In 1676 it was still entire, but in 1687 
Athens was besieged by the Venetians, and the Parthenon was 
hopelessly wrecked. As a ruin it became the prey of the Turks 
and all other devastators, and in order to save something of what 
remained of its precious works of art. Lord Elgin, about the year 
1800, brought home to England some portions of the frieze of 
the temple, with other works of Phidias, in marble, sold them to 
the government, and they are preserved in the British Museum. 
This frieze is a most interesting subject to study, not only as a 
specimen of Greek art of the period of Pericles, but as a historic 
record of the type and action of the Greek horses of that day. 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HOKSE. 157' 

It consists of a series of white marble slabs, something over four 
feet wide, upon which are sculptured, in high relief, the heroes 
and defenders of Athens, mounted on horses, and some of these 
horses are pacing, while others are trotting and cantering. This 
is the first undoubted record we have of the pacer, and it is now 
over two thousand three hundred and thirty years old. 

Britain became a Roman province in the reign of Claudius, in 
the first part of the first century of the Christian era, and it con- 
tinued under the Eoman yoke until a.d. 426, when the troops 
were withdrawn to help Yalentinian against the Huns, and never 
returned. When Julius Caesar first invaded Britain, in the year 
B.C. 55, he found the inhabitants fierce and warlike and abun- 
dantly supplied with horses and war chariots. These chariots 
were driven with great daring and skill, and the fact was thus 
demonstrated that this kind of warfare was not a new thing to 
the Britons, and that they were not to be easily subdued. The 
next year he returned again, but the second seems to have been 
no more successful than the first expedition. But little is known 
of the extent of territory overrun or the result of these invasions 
beyond the fact that no setttlement was made then, and none till 
about ninety years afterward, when under the reign of Claudius, 
a strong military colony was planted there and Britain became a 
Roman province. During these centuries of bondage we know 
practically nothing of the lives of the slaves and but little of 
their masters, except the remnants of military works for aggression 
and defence, and the magnificent roads they constructed where- 
ever they moved their armies. In relation to their horses, I will 
make a few extracts from a work published about the beginning of 
this century, by Mr. John Lawrence, a man of great research and in- 
telligence, besides of a wide acquaintance with the practical affairs 
of the horse, and, I may add, altogether the most reliable writer 
of his period. He says: 

" In forming the paces, if tbe colt was not naturally of a proud and lofty 
action, like tbe Spanish or Persian horses, wooden rollers and weights were 
I ound to their pastern joints, which gave them the habit of lifting up their 
feet. This method, also, was practiced in teaching them the ambulatura, or 
amble (pace), perhaps universally t e common traveling pace of the Romans. 

"That natural and most excellent pace, tbe trot, seems to have been very 
little prized or atte.ided to by the ancients, and was, indeed, by the Romans 
held' in a kind of contempt, or aversion, as is demonstrated by the terms which 
served to describe it. A trotting horse was called by them succussator, o: 
shaker, and sometimes cruciator, or tormentor, which bad terms, it may be pre- 



158 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

sullied, were applied specially to those wliicli in these days we dignify with 
tbe expressive appellation of ' bone-setters.'" 

The statuary of the early ages furnishes some excellent illustra- 
tions of the gait of the horse at that period of the world's his- 
tory. The four bronze horses on St. Mark's in Venice are known 
throughout the world, and they are in the pacing attitude. The 
forefoot that is advanced is possibly a little too much elevated 
to strike the ground the same instant the hinder foot should 
strike it, but the whole action indicated is undoubtedly the 
lateral action. The date of these horses is lost in history, but it 
is supposed they were cast in Rome, about the beginning of the 
Christian era. Their capture in Rome and transfer to Constan- 
tinople, then their capture by the V^enetians and transfer to 
Venice, next their capture by Napoleon and transfer to Paris, 
and then their restoration to Venice, are all matters of history. 

William Stephanides, or Fitz Stephen, as he was called, a 
monk of Canterbury, was born in London, lived in the reigns of 
King Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I., and died 1191. He 
wrote a description of London in Latin, Avhich was afterward 
translated by John Strype, and printed, from which I take the 
following extract: 

" There is without one of the gates, immediately in the suburb, a certain 
smooth field (Smithfield) in name and reality. There every Friday, unless it 
be one of the more solemn festivals, is a noted show of well-bred horses ex- 
posed for sale. 'J'he earls, barons and knights who are at the time resident in 
the city, as we 1 as most of the citizens, flock thither either to look or to buy. 
It is pleasant to see the nags icith their sleek and shining coats, smoothly ainhUng 
{pacing) along, rainng and setting down, as it were, their feet on either side; in 
one part {of the field) are horses better adapted to the esquires; those whose pore 
is rougher, yet expeditious, lift up and set down, as it were, the two oppodte fore 
and hind feet {trotting) together." 

After locating and describing the pacers in one part of the field 
and the trotters iu another, Fitz Stephen goes on to take a look 
at the colts, then horses of burden, "strong and stout of limb," 
and then their chargers in their galloping action. He next gives 
a very spirited description of the race, when the people raise a 
shout and all the other horses, cattle, etc., are cleared away, that 
the contestants may have an unobstructed field. It is a fact 
worthy of note that every English writer on the race horse, for 
the past century or two, has quoted a part of the above paragraph 
from Fitz Stephen as the first known and recorded instance of 



ANTIQUITY AXD HISTOKY OF THE PACING HOESE. 159 

racing in England, but left one of the most important parts out. 
Even Mr. Whyte, one of the most prominent of modern writers, 
in his "'History of the British Turf," seems to have followed some 
other writer, in the omission; or possibly, as he never had seen a 
pacer in England, he concluded that Fitz Stephen had only imag- 
ined that he saw, in one part of the field, horses moving at the 
lateral gait. In the paragraph quoted above, I have italicised 
that part of the description which English writers on turf sub- 
jects have omitted with remarkable uniformity. 

This seems to have been the period in which the pacing horse 
reached the highest point in official and popular appreciation, at 
least since the days of the Koman occupation of Britain. In 
speaking of this period, Mr. Lawrence says: "All descriptions of 
saddle horses were taught to amble" (that did not amble natu- 
rally), "and that most excellent and useful gait, the trot, was 
almost entirely disused." In addition to the evidence of Fitz 
Stephen, we have that furnished by the Great Seals of a succes- 
sion of sovereigns commencing Avith Eichard I., and continuing 
to Elizabeth. These seals represent a knight in armor, mounted 
on a pacing horse in action, and perhaps the most conspicuous, 
at least the clearest, impression that has come down to us is that 
of King John, used at Runnymede, when he yielded to the de- 
mands of his barons and granted the Magna Charta. This act 
secured the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race for all time and in 
all climes. 

Mr. Thomas Blundeville was, probably, the first writer on the 
horse who undertook to publish a book in the English language 
on that subject. This book, entitled "The Art of Eiding," was 
merely a translation from the Italian, with some brief observa- 
tions on English horses added to it. The first edition, it is said, 
was published ill London, 1558)^theyear that Queen Elizabeth as- 
cended the throne. The only edition which I have been able to 
find in the British Museum is that of 1580, in old English black 
letter. In quoting from the old authors of that period I will 
seek to avoid confusion by using the modern orthography. In 
speaking of the horses of his day he says: 

" Some men would liave a breed of great trotting horses meet for the war 
and to serve in the field. Some others again would have a breed of ambling 
horses of a mean stature for to journey and travel by the way. Some, again, 
would have a race of swift runners to run for wagers or to gallop the buck, or 
to serve for such like exercise for pleasure. But the plain countryman would 
have a breed only for draft or burthen. 



160 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

" The Irisli Hobbie is a pretty fine borse, baving a good bead and a body in - 
diflferently well proportioned, saving tbat many of tbeiu be slender and pin- 
buttocked. Tbey are tender-moutbed, nimble, pleasant and apt to be taugbt, 
and for tbe most part tbey be amblers and tbus very meet for tbe saddle and to- 
travel by tbe way. Yea, and tbe Irisbmen, botb witb darts and ligbt speai'^, 
do use to skirmisb witb tiiem in tbe field, and many of tbem do prove to tbiit 
use very well, by means tbey be so ligbt and swift. 

" Let tliose mares tbat sball be put to tbe stallion be of a bigb stature, 
strongly made, large and fair, and bave a trotting pace as tbe mares of Flan- 
ders and some of our own mares be. For it is not meet, for divers rea.sons, 
tbat borses of [service stallions] sbould amble. But if any man seeks to bave- 
a race of ambling borses, to travel by tbe way, tben I would wisb bis stallion 
to be a fair jennet of Spain, or at least a bastard jennet, or else a fair Irisb 
ambling Hobbie; and tbe mare to be also a bastard jennet, bred bere witbin 
tbis realm, baving an ambling pace, or else some otber of our ambling mares, 
so tbat tbe mare be well proportioned. And if any man desires to bave swift 
runners let bim cboose a borse of Barbary or a Turk to be bis stallion, and let 
tbe mare, wbicb sball be put unto bim, be like of stature and making unto 
bim, so nigb as may be, for most commonly, sucb sire and dam sucb colt." 

It is evident Mr. Blundeville Avas not much of a friend of the 
pacer, but as an honest writer he considers things as he finds 
them. Unfortunately he throws no light upon just what he 
means by the term "Spanish Jennet," and a definition of that 
term, as used in the sixteenth century, would throw much light 
on passages from following writers in later periods. Everybody 
knows he was a small Spanish saddle horse, but nobody knows 
just what gait he took. To use Blundevilles own language, 
"The pace of the jennet of Spain is neither trot nor amble, but a. 
comely kind of going like the Turke." 

Mr. Gervaise Markham published several revised and enlarged 
editions of his work on the horse, the last of which I have been 
able to examine being printed in London, 1607, the same year 
the colony was planted at Jamestown, Virginia. In this edition 
he devotes nine short chapters or paragraphs to the pacer. In 
quoting from him I will again use the modern methods of spell- 
ing. He says: 

" First to speak of ambling in general. It is tbat smootb and easy pace 
wbicb tbe labor and industry of an ingenious brain batb found out to relieve 
tbe agpd, sick, impotent and diseased persons, to make women undertake 
journeying and so by tbeir community to grace society; to make great men try 
tbe ease of travel, more willing totbrust tbemselves into tbe offices of tbe com- 
monwealtb, and to do tbe poor botb relief and service. It makes tbem wben 
necessity, or as tbe proverb is, "wben tbe devil drives," not to be vexed witb 
tbe two torments, a troubled mind and a tormented body. To conclude, am- 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTOKY OF THE PACING HOKSE. 161 

bling was found out for the general ease of tbe whole world, as long as there is 
either pleasure, commerce or trade amongst the people. Now for the manner 
of the motion and the difference betwixt it and trotting. It cannot be described 
more plainly than I have set down in my former treatise; which is that it is the 
taking up of both legs together upon one side and so carrying them smoothly 
along to set them down upon the ground even together, and in that motion he 
must lift and wind up his fore foot somewhat high from the ground, but his 
binder foot he must no more than take from the ground, as it were, sweep it 
close to the earth. Now, by taking up both his legs together on one side, I 
mean he must take up his right fore foot and his right hinder foot. For, as in 
the contrary pace, when a horse trots he takes up his feet crosswise, as the 
left hinder foot and the right fore foot, etc." 

Mr. Markham, in his edition of 1607, then goes on in six or 
eight chapters acknowledging that many foals pace naturally, 
and to show how the foal may be trained to pace. His methods 
are very cruel, in many cases, and very crude throughout; but it 
clearly demonstrates the fact that in the sixteenth century the 
pace was a very general gait among English horses. In these 
chapters we find the toe weight first introduced as well as the 
trammels or hopples. The most striking fact brought out in 
these chapters is the discovery that more than three hundred 
years ago Englishmen were using the same devices to convert 
trotters into pacers that we are now using to convert pacers into 
trotters. He takes notice that Mr. Blundeville had advised those 
who wished to breed amblers to select a Spanish jennet or an 
Irish Hobbie, and objects to the former on the grounds that their 
paces are weak and uncertain. From this I conclude that the 
gait of the jennet, whatever it might have been, was not a habit 
of action fixed in the breed, and that its transmission was doubt- 
ful. 

Mr. Markham then goes on further to explain the mechanism 
of the trot and the pace and incidentally introduces the rack or 
single-foot action, which, I think, is the first time I have found 
it in any English writer. He says: 

" The nearer a horse taketh his limbs from the ground, the opener and evener 
and the shorter he treadeth, the better will be his pace, and the contrary 
declares much imperfection. If you buy a horse for pleasure the amble is the 
best, in which you observe that he moves both his legs on one side togethe" 
neat with complete deliberation, for if he treads too short he is apt to stumble, 
if too large to cut and if shuffling or rowling he does it slovenly, and besides 
rids no ground. If your horse be designed for hunting, a racking pace is most 
expedient, which little differs from the amble, only is more active and nimble, 
whereby the horse observes due motion, but you must not force him too eagerly, 



162 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

lest being in confusion he lose all knowledge of what jou design him to, and 
so handle his legs confusedly. The gallop is requisite for race horses. . . . 
If he gallop round and raise his fore legs he is then said to gallop strongly, but 
not capable of much speed, and is fitter for the war than racing." 

In 1607 the Duke of Newcastle published his famous work on 
the horse under the title, "A New Method and Extraordinary 
Invention to Dress Horses, and Work them According to Nature 
and also To Perfect Nature by the 8ubtilty of Art which was 
Never Found Out, but by the Thrice Noble, High, and Puissant 
Prince, William Cavendish, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of New- 
castle, etc., etc.," followed with twelve other titles and oflBces. 
The book was dedicated to "His Most Sacred Majesty, Charles 
the Second," and is pretentious and magniloquent in its letter 
press and its make-up as it is in its title. In this work there is 
a great deal of bad English, some sense, and much nonsense, all 
mixed up with a strut of superiority that His Grace, no doubt, 
felt justified in enjoying after his long years of beggary in Ant- 
werp. In giving the natural gaits of the horse he places the 
walk first, then the trot and next the amble, which he describes 
very minutely as follows: 

" For an amble he removes both his legs of a side, as, for example, take the 
far side, he removes his fore leg and his hinder leg at one time, whilst the 
other two legs of the near side stand still; and when those legs are on the 
ground, which he first removed, at the same time they are upon the ground 
the other side, which is the nearer side, removes fore* leg and hinder leg on 
that side, and the other legs of the far side stand still. Thus an amble removes 
both his legs of a side and every remove changes sides; two of a side in the 
air and two upon the ground at the same time. And this is a perfect amble." 

The duke seems to have been somewhat profuse in the use of 
words, and not very happy in his use of them, but after all we 
know just what he means. The description of the movement is 
that of the clean-cut pace, and our object in introducing it here 
is not only to show that the pace was then a well-known and 
natural gait in England, but also to show that the pace and the 
amhle are one. In itself, the word "amble" is a better word than 
"pace," for the latter is often used in referring to a rate of speed 
without regard to the particular gait taken by the horse, but in 
this country it is now universally understood to apply to the 
lateral motion, and it would not be wise at this day to attempt to 
change it. There is an undefined supposition in the mind oi 
some people that the amble is something diiferent from the pace, 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTOEY OF THE PACI]S"G HORSE. 163 

that it is a slower and less pronounced gait, and hence we are 
often told a given horse did not pace, but "he ambled off." In 
all that we have found in the writings of the past, and in all that 
I have seen with my own eyes, I have not been able to discover 
that there is any distinction between the amble and the pace. 
The only distinction is not in the gait itself, but in the fact that 
our ancestors, four hundred years ago, used the word "amble" 
to express precisely the same thing that their descendants now 
express by the word "pace." The only sense in which the word 
"amble" is used among the horsemen of this country is to de- 
scribe a kind of slow, incipient pace that many horses, both run- 
ners and trotters, show when recalled for a fresh start in scoring 
for a race. This probably indicates, whether in the case of a 
runner or a trotter, that somewhere, not very far removed, there 
is a pacing inheritance, and this incipient amble, as it is some- 
times called, comes from that inheritance. It is also possible 
that it may arise from the excitement of the start and the confu- 
sion consequent upon the contest. 

At the close of Queen Elizabeth's reign, about the beginning 
of the seventeenth century, the pacing horse of England was at 
the highest point of his utility and fame. He was the horse for 
the race course, he was the horse for the hunting field, and he was 
the horse for the saddle. He was able to beat King James' 
Arabian, and with the few Barbs that had then been brought in, 
the historian informs us, he was able to hold his own. There 
were two tribes of his congeners, the Galloway and the Irish 
Hobbie, the former from Southwestern Scotland and the north of 
England, and the latter from Ireland. These tribes were chiefly 
pacers, and not a few of them were distinguished as running 
horses. The Bald Galloway, as he was called, was a grand repre- 
sentative of his tribe. He was simply a native pony with a bald 
face, and he was a capital runner for his day, and a number of 
his get were distinguished runners. True, he is tricked out in 
the Stud Book with a pedigree, wholly fictitious, and that no- 
body ever heard of for a hundred years after he was foaled, but 
that did not prevent his daughter Roxana, when bred to Godol- 
phin Arabian, from producing two of his greatest sons. Lath and 
Cade. This topic, hoAvever, has already been considered in the 
chapter on the English Eace Horse. The Galloways were very 
famous as pacers in their day, and it seems they were about the 
last remnants of the pacing tribes to be found in England. It 



164 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

seems, also, that long after they had ceased to be known on the 
other side their descendants were still known by the same desig- 
nation in Virginia. From the history of the times, it appears 
that a wealthy Irish gentleman invested quite largely in shipping 
live stock to Virginia, and there can hardly be a doubt that his 
shipments included some of the Irish Hobbies. 

While the opening of the seventeenth century witnessed the 
supremacy of the English pacer, in the uses and enjoyments of 
the lives of the people, during the whole course of its succeeding 
years he was battling for his existence, and at its close he was 
nearly extinct. At the close of Queen Anne's reign there were 
still a few Galloways left, but in the early Georges there were no 
longer any survivors, and Great Britain was without a pacer in 
the whole realm. The extinction of a race of horses that had 
been the delight of the kings, queens, nobility, and gentry of a 
great nation for many centuries is, perhaps, without a precedent 
in the history of any civilized people, and the causes which pro- 
duced this wonderful result are well worthy of careful study. In 
looking into these causes we must consider the facts as we find 
them. 

As we have no guide, either historic, linguistic or ethnographic, 
by which we can certainly determine the blood of the original 
inhabitants of the British Isles, it is not remarkable that we 
should be in profound ignorance as to the blood of their horses. 
They were, doubtless, like their masters, of mixed origin, and 
through all the centuries their appearance would indicate that 
they have been bred and reared in a nomadic or semi-wild state, 
in which only the toughest and fleetest had survived. A good 
many years ago I met with a theory, advanced by somebody, that 
the original horse stock of Britain came from the North, but 
there were no reasons given to support it. I have no hesitation 
in accepting this theory, as far as it distinguishes between the 
North and the South, for some Northern countries produce vast 
numbers of natural pacers, as Kussia, for instance, but I have 
never learned that any Southern country produced pacers. Cer- 
tainly the shaft horse of the Russian drosky has been a flying 
pacer for generations, and great numbers of them are produced 
in Eussia, especially in the eastern part of the empire. As these 
pacers are produced in a natural and semi-wild state, it must be 
conceded that habits of action have been inherited from their 
ancestors in the remote past. Historically, we know that the 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 165 

Phoenicians, when they ruled the trade of the world, supplied the 
whole of the northern coast of Africa, from Egypt to Algiers, and 
the southern coast of Spain, with horses, about a thousand years 
before the Christian era. Now, the horses of those regions are 
the descendants of the original stock carried there by the Phoeni- 
cians, and we know their habit of action is not that of the pacer. 
Hence the conclusion that the English pacer came from the 
North and not from the South. In speaking of the difference in 
the gaits of Northern and Southern horses, Mr. John Lawrence 
specifies the horses of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and says: 
"They are round made, but with clean heads and limbs; their 
best pace is the trot (or pace), which indeed is the characteristic 
pace of the Northern, as the gallop is of the Southern horse." 
Other writers speak of the trot (or pace) as common to Northern 
horses, but as not common to Southern horses. Now, as all 
Southern horses do trot, and as these writers could not fail to 
know that they trotted, at some rate of speed, we must construe 
their terms so as to be consistent with plain, common sense. 
There was something in the ''trot" of the Northern horse alto- 
gether different, from the "trot" of the Southern horse that ren- 
dered his habit of action more consi^icuous, probably by his higher 
rate of speed, but still more probably by the peculiar mechanism 
of his lateral action. If we insert the word "pace" instead of 
the word "trot," the meaning of these old writers becomes very 
plain and in harmony with other known facts. Neither does it 
militate against the theory that the inhabitants of Britain may have 
secured their original horse stock from the Phoenician merchants; 
but if they did, it seems quite evident that at a later date they 
supplemented their supply from the pacing element from the 
North. 

At the close of the fifteenth century Polydore Virgil, an 
Italian ecclesiastic, came to England and wrote a descriptive his- 
tory of the British Islands in Latin, which was published about 
1509. Part of this history was very clumsily translated about 
the time the English language began to assume its present form 
in literature and learning. In speaking of the horses of the 
country, he seems to have been greatly surprised with the pacers, 
and treats them as a curiosity. He says: "A great company of 
their horses do not trot, but amble, and yet neither trotters nor 
amblers are strongest, as strength is not always incident to that 
which is most gentle or less courageous." It will be observed 



166 THE HORSE OE AMERICA. 

that these observations were made nearly four hundred years ago, 
and that ohe surprise of the Italian was not at merely seeing a 
few pacers which he had never seen in his own oountry, but that 
"the great company" of English horses were pacers. As I have 
here given an instance showing the surprise of an Italian at find- 
ing pacers, I will follow it with another showing tTie surprise of 
an Englishman at not finding any pacers. The chajDlain of the 
Earl of Cumberland, on his several voyages of discovery in South 
America and the AVest India Islands, about 1596, made elaborate 
note of what he saw and learned of the new countries which the 
English then visited for the first time. These notes passed into the 
hands of that wonderfully prolific writer, or rather compiler, 
Samuel Purchas, from whose fourth volume, page 1171, the fol- 
lowing paragraph is taken: 

" And I wot not bow that kind of beast [speaking of cattle] batb specially 
a liking to these Southerly parts of the world above their horses, none of which 
I have seen by much so tall and goodly as ordinarily they are in England; they 
were well made and well mettled, and good store there are of them, but me- 
thinks there are many things wanting in them which are ordinary in our Eng- 
lish light horses. They are all trotters, nor do I remember that I have seen 
above one ambler, and that was a little fiddling nag. But it may be if there 
were better breeders they would have better and more useful increase, yet they 
are good enough for hackneys, to which use only almost they are employed." 

The surprise of the Englishman at finding no pacers in South 
America seems to have been as great as that of the Italian at 
finding so many of them in England, one hundred years earlier. 
These horses were strictly Spanish, and probably were descended 
from those brought from Palos in 1493 by Columbus, the first 
horses that ever crossed the Atlantic. The ''one little fiddling 
nag" that showed some kind of a pacing gait may have been of 
English blood and captured from some English expedition, sev- 
eral of which were unfortunate; or his failure to trot may have 
been the result of an injury. It should not be forgotten that in 
that period every sea captain was out for what he could capture, 
and this was especially the case as between the English and the 
Spanish. These are the outlines of the principal points of evi- 
dence that the pacing habit of action came from the North and 
not from the South. That there Avere pacers in both Greece and 
Rome before the Christian era, and perhaps later, there can be no 
doubt, for they were both overrun and devastated again and 
again by the hordes of Northern Barbarians, bringing their flocks 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 167 

and their herds and their families, as well as their horses, with 
them. 

This question naturally suggests itself here: "If the English 
pacer had been the pojiular favorite of the English people for so 
many centuries, how did it come that he and his habit of action 
had been so completely wiped out in one century, the seven- 
teenth?" This question might be answered in very few words, 
by saying the people thought they were getting something bet- 
ter to put in his place. In reaching this conclusion I will not 
pretend to say the judgment of the people was not right, that is, 
if they exercised any judgment in the case. "Jamie the Scots- 
man" when on the throne set the fashion in the direction of 
foreign blood by paying the enormous price of iBve hundred 
pounds for the Markham Arabian. The Duke of Newcastle, 
when he was young, had personally seen this horse, and while he 
thought he was a true Arabian, he described him as a very ordi- 
nary horse in his size and form, and an entire failure as a race 
horse. It seems that any average native pacer could outrun him, 
but he carried the badge of royalty, and that was sufficient to 
make him fashionable, as he was not only the king's horse, but 
was himself a royal Arabian. The weak place in the character 
of James I., in addition to his intolerable pedantry, was his in- 
ordinate ambition to be considered the wisest sovereign who ever 
sat upon a throne since the days of Solomon. His courtiers, 
nobility, and all who approached him understood his weakness, 
and a little quiet praise of the great superiority of the Arabian 
blood in the horse, over all other breeds and varieties, was always 
grateful to the monarch, for he was the original discoverer and 
patentee of that blood. Then and there, in order to praise the 
wisdom of a foolish king, a foolish fashion grew into a foolish 
notion that has afflicted all England from that day to this. No 
humbug of either ancient or modern times has had so long a run 
and so wide a range as the miserable fallacy "that all excellence 
in the horse comes from the Arabian." Notwithstanding the 
thousand tests that have been made and the thousand failures 
that have invariably followed, from the time of King James to 
the present day, there are still men writing books and magazine 
articles on the assumption that "all excellence in the horse comes 
from the Arabian," without ever having devoted an honest hour 
to the study of the question as to whether this is a truth or a fal- 
lacy. This craze for Arabian blood was the primary cause of the 



168 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

extinction of the pacer, and this craze was so strong in its in- 
fluence that when a foreign horse was brought in, no difference 
from what country, if he were of the lighter type he was called 
an Arabian and so advertised in order to secure the patronage of 
breeders. Horses brought from the African coast were invaria- 
bly classed as Arabians, notwithstanding they and their ancestors 
were in Africa more than a thousand years before there were any 
horses in Arabia; and the same may be said of Spain. But as this 
line of inquiry has already been considered in another chapter, 
I will get back to the immediate topic. 

The process of breeding out the pacer did not commence in 
real earnest until the middle of the seventeenth century, when 
the Stuarts regained the sovereignty of Great Britain in the per- 
son of Charles II. Released from the restraints of Puritan rule, 
the Restoration brought with it a carnival of immorality and vice, 
for the court and the courtiers set the fashion and the people fol- 
lowed. As the breeding interest of the period of which we now 
speak has already been considered in the chapter on the English 
Race Horse, I will not further enlarge upon it. The light, or 
running and hunting, horses of England of that day were not all 
pacers, but they were all of the same type and the same blood, 
hence when I speak of the pacers I include their congeners. 
They were small — less than fourteen hands high — and not gener- 
ally handsome and attractive. In general utility they Avere ahead 
of the importations, and doubtless many of them could run as 
fast and as far as the foreign horses, but the foreigners had the 
advantage in size, especially the Turks and the Neapolitans; be- 
sides this, they were more uniformly handsome and attractive in 
their form and carriage. It is also probable that the outcross 
from the strangers to invigorate the stock was needed and re- 
sulted in the increase of the size of the progeny. This latter 
suggestion is inferential and has been sustained by many similar 
experiences, but without this as a start it would be exceedingly 
difficult to account for the rapid increase in the height of the 
English race horse. It is certainly true that the chief aim of the 
English breeder of that day was to increase the size, without los- 
ing symmetry and style, and if he found that foreign upon native 
blood gave him a start in that direction, he was wise in the com- 
mingling. Another consideration, growing out of the rural econ- 
omy of the people, doubtless had a very wide influence in the 
direction of wiping out the pacer, in this period of transition. 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 1G9 

Long journeys in the saddle became less frequent, good roads 
began to appear and vehicles on wheels took the jilace of the saddler 
and the pack horse. To get greater weight and strength for this 
service, recourse was had to crosses with the larger and courser 
breeds, and through these channels have come the giants and the 
pigmies of the modern race course. Under the changed condi- 
tions of travel and transportation it is not remarkable that the 
people should have been willing to see their long-time favorites 
disappear, for it is known to every man of experience that the 
pace is not a desirable gait for harness work. No doubt the pacer 
is as strong as the trotter of the same size and make-up, but in 
his smooth, gliding motion there is a suggestion of weakness com- 
municated to his driver that is never suggested by the bold, 
bounding trotter. The antagonism between the pacers and the 
new horses of Saracenic origin was irreconcilable and one or the 
other had to yield. As the management of the contest was in 
the hands of the master the result could be easily foreseen, for if 
one cross failed, another followed and then another, till the Sara- 
cenic blood was completely dominant in eliminating the lateral 
and implanting the diagonal action in its stead. 

As no home-bred pacer, of any type or breed, has been seen in 
England for nearly two hundred years, it is not remarkable that 
Englishmen of good average intelligence, for the past two or three 
generations, have lived and died supposing they knew all about 
horses, and yet did not know there had ever been such a thing in 
England as a breed of pacing horses. When, some eighteen or 
twenty years ago, I called the attention of Mr. H. F. Euren, 
compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, to the early English pacers 
as a most inviting field in which to look for the origin of the 
"Norfolk Trotters," he was surprised to learn that such horses 
had existed in England, but he went to work and gathered up 
many important facts that appear in the first volume of the 
Hackney compilation. Many of these facts, but in less detail, 
had already appeared, from time to time, in Wallace^ s Monthly, 
but Mr. Euren's vvas the first modern English publication to 
place them before English readers. From this prompting, Mr. 
Euren did well, but we must go back a little to see how this sub- 
ject was treated by English writers of horse books, who wrote 
without any promptings from this side. 

Mr. William Youatt was a voluminous writer on domestic 
animals, and at one time was looked upon as the highest author- 



170 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ity on the horse, both in England and in this country. He seems 
to have been a practitioner of veterinary surgery, and from the 
number of volumes which he published successfully, he must 
have been a man of ability and education. There can be no 
question that he knew a great deal — quite too much to know any- 
thing well. The first edition of his work on the horse was pub- 
lished in 1831,- and soon after its appearance several publishing 
houses in this country seized upon it as very valuable, and each 
one of them soon had an edition of it before the public. It pur- 
ports to have been written at the instance of *'The Society for 
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." This declaration was a 
good thing, in a commercial view, and no doubt it did much in 
extending the circulation of the book. Without tarrying to note 
several minor historical blunders, I will go direct to one relating 
to the gait of the horse, which is noAv under consideration. In 
his fourth edition, page 535, he incidentally discusses the mech- 
anism of the pace, and after speaking of the Elgin Marbles, to 
which I have referred at the beginning of this chapter, and after 
conceding that two of the four horses are not galloping but pac- 
ing, he says: 

" Wbetber tliis was then tlie mode of trotting or not, it is certain that it is 
never seen to occur in nature in the present day; and, indeed, it appears quite 
inconsistent witli the necessary balancing of the body, and was, therefore, more 
probably an error of tbe artist." 

This remark is simply amazing in an author who pretentiously 
undertakes to instruct his countrymen in the history of the horse 
when he knows nothing about that history. If he had gone back 
only twenty-two years, "Old John Lawrence," in his splendid 
quarto, would have told him about the pacer. If he had gone 
back one hundred and sixty years, the Duke of Newcastle would 
have explained to him the complete and perfect mechanism of 
the pacing gait. If he had gone still further back and examined 
Gervaise Markham, Blundeville, Polydore Virgil, and Fitz 
Stephen the Monk, of the twelfth century, any and all of them 
would have explained to him the pacing habit of action and shown 
him that for many successive centuries the pacing horse was the 
popular and fashionable horse of the realm. If Mr. Youatt had 
lived to see John E. Gentry pace a mile in 2:00^; Eobert J. in 
2:01|, and dozens of others in less than 2:10, he might have 
changed his mind and concluded that it was possible, after all, for 



ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 171 

3, horse to travel at the lateral gait without topj)ling over. From 
Mr. Youatt and a few other modern English authors, most of our 
American writers on the horse have derived what little mental 
pabulum they thought they needed, and thus an error at the 
fountain has been carried into all the ramifications of our horse 
literature. Only two or three years ago a very intelligent gentle- 
man, Avho had attained great eminence as a veterinary surgeon, 
especially for his knowledge and treatment of the horse's foot, 
seriously and in good faith stoutly maintained that the pacing 
habit of action was merely the result of an abnormal condition of 
the foot, and that all pacers would trot just as soon as their feet 
were put in the right shape. We must not laugh at this wild 
notion, for it is really no worse than Mr. Youatt's doubting 
whether it was possible for a horse to balance himself at the 
lateral motion. Neither gentleman seemed to know anything 
about the fact that it was a matter of inheritance, and that the 
lateral habit of action had come down by transmission through 
all the generations for a period of more than two thousand years. 
It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman who was so con- 
fident that the pace was merely the result of the abnormal condi- 
tion of the feet brought his notions about the pacer from across 
the water. He was an Anglo-American, and could make a pacer 
into a trotter in a JifEy, by using the paring-knife. He was an 
intelligent man and a skillful veterinarian, but there were no 
pacers in England and there should be none here. Toward the 
close of the chapter on The Colonial Horses of Virginia, will bo 
found the observations of an English tourist in 1795-96 who is 
very certain that there is some mistake about the pacer, and will 
not be convinced there are any, unless they are artificially created. 
Having now completed what I had to say about the old English 
pacer, it is next in order to consider his descendants in this 
country and the relations they bear to the American trotter. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE AMERICAN PACER AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE AMERICAN 

TROTTER, 

Regulations against stallions at large — American pacers taken to tbe West 
Indies — Narragansett pacers; uianj' foolisli and groundless theories about 
tbeir origin — Dr. McSparran on tbe speed of tbe pacer — Mr. Updike's 
testimony — Mr. Hazard and Mr. Enoch Lewis — Exchanging meetings 
with Virginia — Watson's Annals — Matlack and Acrelius — Rip Van Dam's 
horse — Cooper's evidence — Cause of disappearance — Banished to the fron- 
tier — First intimation that the pace and tbe trot were essentially one gait 
— How it was received — Analysis of the two gaits — Pelbam, Highland 
Maid, Jay-Eye-See, Blue Bull — The pacer forces himself into publicity — 
Higher rate of speed — Pacing races very early — Quietly and easily devel- 
oped — Comes to his speed quickly — His present eminence not permanent — 
Tbe gamblers carried him there — Will he return to bis former obscurity ? 

In the several chapters devoted to "Colonial Horse History" 
will be found all the leading facts that I have been able to glean 
from the early sources of information. With the exceptions of 
the horses brought from Utrecht in Holland to New Amsterdam 
(New York), two shiploads that sailed out of the Zuider Zee and 
landed at Salem, Massachusetts, and those brought from Sweden 
by the colonists that settled on the Delaware, all the early im- 
portations came from England. As much the larger number of 
those from England and Sweden were pacers, the breeds and 
habits of action were soon mixed up, as those who had no pacers 
wanted pacers for the saddle, and those who wanted more size, 
regardless of the gait, were always ready to supply their want by 
an exchange of their saddle horses for more size. The Dutch 
horses were certainly something over fourteen hands and the Eng- 
lish and Swedish horses were perhaps nearer thirteen than fourteen 
hands. The colonists from the first, and from one end of the 
land to the other, seem to have appreciated the importance of in- 
creasing the size and strength of their horse stock, and this was 
very hard to do under the conditions then prevailing of allowing 
their horses to roam at large. Hence, stringent regulations were 



RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 173 

adopted in all the colonies against permitting immature entire 
colts and stallions under size to wander where they pleased. It 
is doubtful whether these regulations were any more effective 
than those of Henry VIII. , for while there was some increase, it- 
was hardly perceptible until after the close of the colonial days. 
The real increase did not commence till the farmers had provided 
themselves with facilities for keeping their breeding stock at 
home. 

It is very evident from the statistics of size and gait, as given 
in the chapters referred to above, that our forefathers wisely 
selected the most compact, strong and hardy animals they could 
find in England as the type best adapted to fight their way 
against the hardships of a life in the wilderness of the new world. 
There have been some attempts, wholly fanciful and baseless, to 
trace importations from other countries, outside of those men- 
tioned above, but all such attempts have proven wholly imaginary 
and worse than futile. In less than twenty years after the New 
England colonies received their first supply they commenced 
shipping horses by the cargo to Barbadoes and other West India 
Islands. This trade was cultivated, extended to all the islands, 
and continued during the remainder of the seventeenth and 
practically the whole of the eighteenth century. The pacers of 
the American colonies were exceedingly popular and sought after 
by the Spanish as well as the Dutch and English islands. In- 
deed, the planters of Cuba alone carried away at high prices 
nearly all the pacers that New England could produce. They 
knew nothing about pacers for the saddle until they had tried 
them and then they would have nothing else. These continuous 
raids of the Spaniards of the West Indies upon the pacers of 
New England, and Rhode Island especially, has been assigned, 
by the local historians of that State as one of the principal 
causes of the decadence and practically final disappearance of the 
Narragansett pacer from the seat of his triumphs and his fame. 
It is Just to remark here, in passing, that if there had been pacers 
among the horses of Spain, the Spanish dependencies would have 
secured their supplies from the mother country and not have 
come to Khode Island and paid fabulous prices for them. 

As all the pacing traditions of this country to-day point to 
the horses of Narragansett Bay as the source from which our 
modern pacers have derived their speed, we must give some at- 
tention to the various theories that have been advanced as to the 



174 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

origin of the Narragansett horse. In time past, and extending 
back to a period "whereof the memory of man runneth not to the 
contrary," the horse world has been cursed with a class of men 
who have always been ready to invent and put in circulation the 
most marvelous and incredible stories, about the origin of every 
remarkable horse that has appeared. Some of these wiseacres 
have maintained that the original Narragansett pacer was caught 
wild in the woods by the first settlers on Narragansett Bay, while 
others (and this seems to be of Canadian origin) have insisted 
that when being brought to this country a storm struck the ship 
and the horse was thrown overboard, and after nine days he was 
found off the coast of Newfoundland quietly eating rushes on a 
sand bar, where he was rescued and brought into Narragansett 
Bay. This story of the marine horse probably had its origin in 
the experiences of Rip Van Dam, which will be narrated further 
on. Another representation, coming this time from a very 
reputable source, has been made as to the origin of the Narragan- 
sett horse, and as many, no doubt, have accepted it as true, I 
must give it such consideration as its prominence demands. Mr. 
I. T. Hazard, a representative of the very old and prominent 
Hazard family of Rhode Island, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Up- 
dike, makes the following statement: 

" My grandfather, Governor Robinson, introduced the famous saddle horse, 
the Narragansett pacer, known in the last century over all the civilized parts 
of North America and the West Indies, from whence they have lately been 
introduced into England, as a ladies' saddle horse, under the name of the 
Spanish Jennet. Governor Robinson imported the original from Andalusia, in 
Spain, and the raising of them for the West India market was one of the ob- 
jects of the early planters of this country. My grandfather, Robert Hazard, 
raised about a hundred of them annually, and often loaded two vessels a year 
with them, and other products of his farm, which sailed direct from the South 
Ferry to the West Indies, where they were in great demand." 

This theory of the origin of the Narragansett came down to 
Mr. Hazard as a tradition, no doubt, but like a thousand other 
traditions it has nothing to sustain it. Opposed to it there are 
two clearly ascertained facts, either one of which is wholly fatal 
to it. In the first place, there were no pacers in Andalusia or 
any other part of Spain, and in the second place, these horses, 
according to official data, were the leading item of export from 
Rhode Island in 1680, and Governor Robinson was not born till 
about 1693. As impossibilities admit of no argument, I will not 



RELATIOXS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 175 

add another word to this ^'Andalusian" origin tradition, except 
to say that a hundred years later, when the pacing dam of Sher- 
man Morgan was taken from Cranston, Rhode Ishind, uji into 
Vermont, she was called a "Spanish mare," because Mr. Hazard 
had said the original Narragansett had come from Spain. The 
story of the descendants of the Narragausetts ha'/ing been car- 
ried from the West Indies to England, and there introduced 
under the name of the Spanish Jennet as a lady's saddle horse, is 
wholly imaginative. The Spanish Jennet, whatever its gait may 
have been, was well known in England many years before the 
first horse was brought to any of the x\merican colonies. (See 
extracts from Blundeville and Markham in Chapter XII.) 

After several years of fruitless search for some trace of the 
early importations of horses into the colony of Rhode Island, I 
have reached the conclusion that probably no such importations 
were ever made. The colony of Massachusetts Bay commenced 
importing horses and other live stock from England in 1629, and 
continued to do so for several years and until they were fully 
supplied, as stated above. In 1640 a shipload of horses were ex- 
ported to the Barbadoes, and it was about this time that Rhode 
Island began to assume an organized existence. Her people were 
largely made up of refugees from the religious intolerance of the 
other New England colonies, and they brought their families and 
effects, including their horses, with them. The blood of the 
Narragansett pacer, therefore, was not different from the blood 
of the pacers of the other colonies, but the development of his 
speed by the establishment of a pacing course and the offering of 
valuable prizes, naturally brought the best and the fastest horses 
to this colony and from the best and fastest they built up a breed 
that became famous throughout all the inhabited portions of the 
Western Hemisphere. The race track, with the valuable prizes 
it offered and the emulation it aroused, Avas what did it. As the 
question of origin is thus settled in accordance with what is 
known of history and the natural order of things, and as the Nar- 
ragansett is the great tribe representing the lateral action then 
and since, we must consider such details of history as have come 
down to us. 

The Rev. James McSparran, D.D,, was sent out by the Lon- 
don Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to 
take charge of an Episcopal church that had been planted some 
years before in Rhode Island. He arrived in 1721, and lived till 



176 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

1759. He was an Irishman, and appears to have been somewhat 
haughty and irascible in his temperament, and was disposed to 
find fault with the climate, the currency, the people, and pretty 
much everything he came in contact with. He was a man of ob- 
servation, and during the thirty-eight years he spent in minister- 
ing to the spiritual wants of his flock, he was not unmindful of 
what was passing around him, and made many notes and reflec- 
tions on the various phases of life as they presented themselves 
to his mind, and especially on the products and industries of the 
colony. These notes and observations he wrote out, and they were 
published in Dublin in 1753, under the title of "America Dis- 
sected." 

His writings do not discover that he was a man of very ardent 
piety, but he was honored as a good man while he lived, and was 
buried under the altar he had served so long. His duties some- 
times called him away into Virginia, and, in speaking of the 
great distance of one parish from another, he uses the following 
language: 

" To remedy this (the distance), as the whole province, between the moun- 
tains, two hundred miles up, and the sea, is all a champaign, and without 
stones, they have plenty of a small sort of horses, the best in the world, like 
the little Scotch Galloways; and 'tis no extraordinary journey to ride from 
sixty to seventy miles or more in a day. I have often, but upon larger pacing 
horses, rode fifty, nay, sixty miles a day, even here in New England, where 
the roads are rough, stony and uneven." 

The reverend gentleman seems to assume that his readers knew 
the Scotch Galloways were pacers, and with this explanation his 
observations are very plain. He makes no distinction between 
the Virginia horse and his congener of Rhode Island except that 
of size, in which the latter had the advantage. In speaking of 
the products of Ehode Island he says: 

" The produce of this colony is principally butter and cheese, fat cattle, wool, 
and fine horses, which are exported to all parts of English America. They are 
remarkable for tieetness and swift pacing; and I ham seen some of them pace 
a mile in a little more than two minutes, and a good deal less than three. " 

When I first read this sentence in the reverend doctor's book 
I confess I was not prepared to accept it in any other light 
than that of a wild enthusiast, who knew but little of the force 
of the language he used. To talk about horses pacing, a hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, in a little more than two minutes and a 



KELATIONS OF THE AMEKICAN PACER TO THE TKOTTER. 177 

good deal less than three, appeared to be simply monstrous. 
The language evidently means, according to all fair rules of con- 
struction, that the mile was performed nearer two minutes than 
three, or in other words, considerably below two minutes and 
thirty seconds. I doubt not my readers will hesitate, and per- 
haps refuse, to accept such a performance, just as I did my- 
self till I had carefully Aveighed not only the character of the 
author of the statement, but the circumstances that seemed to 
support it. If the learned divine had known no more of the 
world and its ways than many of his profession, 1 would have 
concluded he was not a competent judge of speed; but he was a 
man of affairs, and knew perfectly well just what he was saying. 
The question naturally arises here as to what opportunities or 
facilities the doctor had for timing those pacers of a hundred 
and fifty years ago. In a note appended to the above extract by 
Mr. Updike, the editor of the work, I find the following: 

" The breed of horses called Narra^ausett pacers, once so celebrated for 
fleetness, endurance and speed, has become extinct. These horses were highly 
valued for the saddle, and transported the rider with great pleasantness and 
sureness of foot. The pure bloods could not trot at all. Formerly they had 
pace-races. Little Neck Beach, in South Kingston, of one mile in length, was 
the race course. A silver tankard was the prize, and high bets were otherwise 
made on speed. Some of these prize tankards were remaining a few years ago. 
Traditions respecting the swiftness of these horses are almost incredible. 

The facts stated by Mr. Updike in this note are corroborated 
from other sources, and may be accepted as true. These were 
the opportunities and facilities the doctor had for holding his 
watch, and nobody will doubt they were sufficient to enable him 
to be a competent witness. In connection with this subject, and 
as another footnote, Mr. Updike introduces a letter from Mr. I. 
T. Hazard, which brings out another very curious fact in the his- 
tory of the pacer. The Hazard family was very eminent in 
Ehode Island, and many of its members have occupied positions 
of high honor and responsibility for several generations. The 
date of the letter is not given, and we may infer it may have 
been written fifty years ago, or perhaps more. Mr. Hazard says: 

" Within ten years one of my aged neighbors, Enoch Lewis, since deceased, 
informed me he had been to Virginia as one of the riding boys, to return a 
similar visit of the Virginians in that section, in a contest on the turf; and that 
such visits were common with the racing sportsmen of Narragansett and 
Virginia, when he was a boy. Like the old English country gentlemen, from 



178 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

whom they were descended, they were a horse-racing, fox-hunting, feasting 
generation." 

This paragraph from Mr. Hazard's pen has been the subject of 
very deliberate consideration. The first promptings of my judg- 
ment were to doubt and reject it, especially on account of the 
absence of date to the letter, and of the remote period in which 
Mr. Enoch Lewis must have visited Virginia. Another ques- 
tion, as to why we have not this information from any other 
source except Mr. Hazard, presented itself with no inconsiderable 
force. After viewing the matter in all its bearings I am 
forced to concede that it is likely to be true. These visits must 
have taken place before the Revolution, and from the construc- 
tion we are able to place upon the dates, this was not impossible. 
It is a fact that I do not hesitate to announce that before the 
Eevolution racing in all its forms was more universally indulged 
in as an amusement than it ever has been since. This was be- 
fore the days of newspapers, and all we can possibly know of the 
sporting events of that period we must gather up from the de- 
tached fragments that have come down to us by tradition. 
There was a strong bond of sympathy and friendship between the 
followers of Dr. McSparran in Khode Island, surrounded as they 
were by Puritans, and their co-religionists in Virginia. They 
were accustomed to maritime life, and had abundance of vessels 
fitted up for the shipment of horses and other live stock to 
foreign ports. To take a number of their fastest pacers on board 
one of their sloops and sail for Virginia would not have been con- 
sidered much of an adventure. These visits were not only occa- 
sions of pleasure and festivity, with the incidental profits of win- 
ning purses and bets, but they were a most successful means of 
advertising the Narragansett pacer; and through these means 
alone the market was opened, as Dr. McSparran expresses it, in 
all parts of British America. When we consider the widesjDread 
fame of these Rhode Island horses, and that there were no other 
means by which they could have achieved it, except by their 
actual performances, we are forced to the conclusion that they 
were carried long distances, and in many directions, for purely 
sporting purposes. That these visits would result in the transfer 
of a good number of the best and fastest horses from Narragan- 
sett to Virginia would be a natural sequence, and thus, in after 
years, we might look for a strong infusion of Narragansett blood 
in the Virginian pacing-horse. 



EELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 17i> 

It apjDears to be a law of our civilization that each generation 
produces somebody who, out of pure love for the curious and 
forgotten, devotes the best years of his life to hunting up old 
things that have well-nigh slipped away from the memory of 
man. In this class Mr. John F. "Watson stands conspicuous 
in what he has done for Philadelphia and New York. In 1830 
he published a work entitled "Annals of Philadelphia and Penn- 
sylvania," in two volumes, and among all the antiquated manners 
and habits that he again brings to our knowledge, he has some- 
thing to say about the horse of an early day: 

"The late very aged T. Matlack, Esq., was passionately fond of races 
in his youth. He told me of his remembrances about Race Street. In 
his early days the woods were in commons, having several straggling forest 
trees still remaining there, and the circular course ranging through those trees. 
He said all genteel horses were pacers. A trotting-horse was deemed a base 
breed. These Race Street races were mostly pace-races. His father and 
others kept pacing stallions for propagating the breed." 

Mr. Watson further remarks, on the same subject: "Thomas 
Bradford, Esq., in telling me of the recollections of the races, 
says he was told that the earliest races Avere scrub and pace-races 
on the ground now used as Race Street." 

The Eev. Israel Acrelius, for many years pastor of the Swedish 
church of Philadelphia, wrote a book early in the last century, 
under the title, "History of New Sweden," which has been trans- 
lated into English. In describing the country and people, in 
their habits and amusements, he thus speaks of the horse: 

" The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found over thirteen hands 
high. He who has a good riding horse never employs him for draught, which 
is also the less necessary, as journeys, for the most i>art, are made on horse- 
back. It must be the result of this, more than to any particular breed in the 
horses, that the country excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often 
made for very high stakes." 

It will be noted that Mr. Acrelius does not say that these races 
were pacing-races; but when his remark is taken in connection 
with what Mr. Matlack said about the pacers, and when it is con- 
sidered that he is speaking of the speed of the saddle horses as 
such, we can easily understand, his true meaning. Incur turf 
history I supposed I was getting well back when I reached 
the great race between Galloway's Selim and Old England, in 
1767, but here we find that race was comparatively modern, and 
that the pacers antedated the gallopers by many, many years. 



180 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

In 1832 Mr. Watson did the same service for New York that 
he had done for Philadelphia, and published his "Annals of New 
York," in which we find the piece of horse history embodied 
in the extract printed on pages 126 and 127, to which the reader 
will please turn. 

It is hardly possible to be mistaken in assuming that Eip Yan 
Dam's letter was written to some person in Philadelphia, and that 
Mr. Watson saw it there. I would give a great deal for the sight of 
it; and if it has been preserved in any of the public libraries of that 
city, either in type or in manuscript form, I have good hopes of yet 
inspecting it. In one point of view it is of exceeding value, and 
that is its date. It is fully established by this letter that, as 
early as 1711, the Narragansetts were not only established as a 
breed or family, but that their fame was already widespread. 
This, of necessity, carries us back into the latter part of the 
seventeenth century, when their exceptional characteristics were 
first developed, or began to manifest themselves. In reaching 
that period we are so near the first importations of horses to the 
colonies that it is no violence to either history or good sense to 
conclude that the original Narragansett was one among the very 
earliest importations. This plays iiavoc with some Ehode Island 
traditions, as will be seen below; but with 1711 fixed as a point 
when the breed was famous, traditions must stand aside. 

While on this matter of dates, it may not be unprofitable to 
compare the advent of the Narragansett with the well-known 
epochs in horse history. Every schoolboy knows that the Darley 
Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, say twenty years after, were 
the great founders of the English race horse. The Narragansetts 
had reached the very highest pinnacle of fame before the Darley 
Arabian was foaled. Darley Arabian reached England about the 
same year that Eip Van Dam's Narragansett jumped over the 
side of the sloop and swam ashore, and this was eighty years be- 
fore there was an attempt at publishing an English stud book. 
When Janus and Othello, and Traveller, and Fearnaught, the 
great founders of the American race horse, first reached Virginia, 
they found the Narragansett pacer had been there more than a 
generation before. On the point of antiquity, therefore, the 
Narragansett is older than what we designate as the thorough- 
bred race horse, and if he has a lineal descendant living to-day 
the pacer has a longer line of speed inheritance, at his gait, than 
the galloper. 



RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 181 

The only attempt at a description of this breed that I have 
met with is that given by Cooper, the novelist, in a footnote to 
"The Last of the Mohicans." This note may be accepted as 
history, so far as it goes, and pretends to be history; but I am 
not prepared to admit that all the breed were sorrels. This 
color, no doubt, prevailed in those specimens that Mr. Cooper 
had seen or heard of, but I think all colors prevailed, as in 
other breeds. He says: 

" In the State of Rhode Island there is a bay called Narragansett, so named 
for a strong tribe of Indians that formerly dwelt on its banks. Accident, or 
one of those unaccountable freaks which nature sometimes plays in the animal 
world, gave rise to a breed of horses which were once well known in America 
by the name of Narragansetts. They were small, commonly of the color 
called sorrel in America, and distinguished by their habit of pacing. Horses 
of this race were, and still are, in much request as saddle-horses, on account 
of their hardiness, and the ease of their movements. As they were also sure 
of foot, the Narragansetts were much sought for by females who were obliged 
to travel over the roots and holes in the new countries." 

Without having a minute description of so much as a single in- 
dividual of the race, I can only infer, from general descriptions, 
as to what their family peculiarities of form and shape may have 
been. It is fully established that they were very compact and 
hardy horses, and that they were not large; perhaps averaging 
about fourteen and a quarter hands in height. I have met with 
no intimation that they were stylish or handsome, and we think 
it is safe to conclude that they were plain in their form, and low 
in their carriage. From my conceptions of the horse I think 
one of the better-shaped Caiaadian pacers, of fifteen hands or 
thereabouts, might be accepted as a fair representative of the 
Narragansett of a hundred and fifty years ago. He was fleet, 
hardy, docile, and sure-footed, but not beautiful, and it is reason- 
able to suppose that the lack of style and beauty was one of the 
leading causes of his becoming extinct in the land of his nativity. 

In considering the causes which resulted in what we may call 
the dispersal of the Narragansett pacers, and their extinction in 
the seat of their early fame, we must be governed by what is 
reasonable and philosophical in the industrial interests of the 
people, rather than look for some great overwhelming disaster, 
like an earthquake, that ingulfed them in a night. In speaking 
of this dispersal, and the causes which led to it, Mr. Hazard says: 



182 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

"One of the causes of the loss of that famous breed here was the great 
demand for tbem in Cuba, when that island began to cultivate sugar exten- 
sively. The planters became suddenly rich, and wanted the pacing-horse for 
themselves and their wives and daughters to ride, faster than we could supply 
them, and sent an agent to this country to purchase them on such terms as he 
could, but to purchase them at all events. I have heard my father say he 
knew the agent very well, and he made his home at the Rowland Brown 
House, at Tower Hill, where he commenced purchasing and shipping until ail 
the good ones were sent off. He never let a good one escape him. This, and 
the fact that they were not so well adapted to draught as other horses, was 
the cause of their being neglected, and I believe the breed is now extinct in 
this section. My father described the motion of this horse as differing from 
others in that his backbone moved through the air in a straight line, without 
inclining the rider from side to side, as the common racker or pacer of the 
present day. Hence it was very easy; and being of great power of endurance, 
they would perform a journey of a hundred miles in a day, without injury to 
themselves or rider." 

We can understand very well how an enormous and unexpected 
demand from Cuba, without restriction as to price, should re- 
duce the numbers of the breed very materially. But it is a poor 
compliment to the intelligence and thrift of the good people of 
Narragansett to say that, because there was a lively demand, 
they killed the goose that laid the golden egg every day. It is a 
slander upon that Yankee smartness which is proverbial to con- 
clude that they deprived themselves of the means of supplying a 
market that was making thcim all rich. We must, therefore, 
look for other causes that were more potent in producing so 
marked a result. 

After more than a hundred years of faithful service, of great 
popularity, and of profitable returns to their breeders, the little 
Narragansetts began to disappear, just as their ancestors had dis- 
appeared a century earlier. Ehode Island was no longer a 
frontier settlement, but had grown into a rich and prosperous 
State. Mere bridle paths through the woods had developed into 
broad, smooth highways, and wheeled vehicles had taken the 
place of the saddle. Under these changed conditions, the little 
pacer was no longer desirable or even tolerable as a harness horse, 
and he was su^Dplanted by a larger and more stylish type of horse, 
better suited to the particular kind of work required of him. 
This was simply the "survival of the fittest," considering the 
nature of the services required of the animal. The average 
height of the Narragansett was not over fourteen hands and one 
inch. His neck was not long, even for his size; he dropped 



RELATIONS OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 183 

rapidly on the croup, and his carriage was low, with nothing of 
elegance or style in his appearance. His mane and tail were 
heavy, his hind legs were crooked, his limbs and feet were of the 
very best, but aside from his great speed and the smoothness of 
his movements under the saddle, there was nothing very desira- 
ble or attractive about him. In a contest with a type of the har- 
ness horse, at least one hand higher, of high carriage and elegant 
appearance, there could only be one result, and that soon decided. 

As in England, so in this country, the blood of the running 
horse soon worked the extermination of the pacer; not becatise it 
was stronger in reproducing itself, perhaps, but because it had 
the skill and fancy of the breeder enlisted in selecting and mat- 
ing so as to make the expunging process complete. Only a few 
years ago a pacing horse could hardly be found in any of the 
older settled portions of the country, especially where running 
blood had become fashionable. He was literally banished to the 
frontiers of Canada, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, 
and especially in the latter two States, where his blood is still 
appreciated and preserved for the luxurious saddle gaits which 
it alone transmits. In many individual cases he has shown won- 
derful power in meeting and overcoming antagonistic elements, 
but with the tide of running blood all against him, it was only a 
question of time as to how soon he would be totally submerged. 

It is only a quarter of a century ago that the first volume of 
"Wallace's American Trotting Register" was published, and then 
began the great task of bringing order out of chaos. In a his- 
torical introduction to that work, I inserted the following: 

" So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing mares have 
produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have themselves become fast trotters, 
and little or nothing known of their breeding, that I confess to a degree of . 
embarrassment, from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were 
limited to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena altogether, 
but, while they are by no means universal, they are too common and apparent 
to be thus easily disposed of. I am not aware that any writer has ever brought 
this question to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its discussion 
and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the observations of others may not 
sustain me in the prominence given these phenomena, but all will concede 
there are some cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and per- 
haps unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin, and that 
appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced, will not prove reliable 
producers of trotters. Such an animal being in a great degree phenomenal, 
should not be too highly prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trot- 
ting sire as well as a trotter." 



184: THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and 
tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought 
that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowl- 
edge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had 
ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the 
pace and speed at the trot. Some laiighed at it as not practical, 
others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some- 
thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. 
It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before 
horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more 
before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent 
men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier preju- 
dices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief 
that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the 
same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. 
At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is 
received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite 
universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the 
recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and 
habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing, 
families, to which the reader is referred. 

At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make 
l^lain the proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two- 
forms of one and the same gait. This is evident from the fact 
that this gait, in one form or the other, is the intermediate link be- 
tween the walk and the gallop, and this is true among nearly»all 
quadrupeds. I have also there shown, and I think beyond cavil, 
that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is the same, and 
especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used as one 
leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we 
call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it 
the trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, 
and by the ear no man can tell whether the movement is at the 
lateral or diagonal motion. In all the varieties of steps that a 
horse may be taught, and in all the methods of progression that 
he may naturally adopt, there is no step or movement in which 
he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the trot. From the 
place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold, indiffer- 
ently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; 
from the unity of action and result in the use of the same mech- 
anism, and from the wide disparity between the mechanism of 



RELATION'S OF THE AMERICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. 185 

this gait and that of all other gaits in the action of the horse, we 
must conclude that the pace and the trot are one and the same 
gait. 

Another evidence of the unity of the two forms of the trot is 
to be found in the great numbers of pacers that have been 
■changed over to trotters and the astonishing readiness with which 
they took to the new form of action. To go back no further 
than the records sustain us, we find that the converted pacer 
Pelham was the first horse that ever trotted in 2:28. This was 
in 1849, and four years later the converted pacer Highland 
Maid trotted in 2:27. Twenty years later, Occident, another, 
trotted in 2:16f. These were champions of their day, and when 
we come a little nearer we find that Maud S. was a pacer and 
Sunol was a pacer, although neither of them ever paced in jjublic, 
and the fact that they ever paced at all was held as a kind of 
"home secret." Since the days of Pelham, literally thousands 
of horses have been changed from pacers to trotters, and some 
hundreds have been changed from trotters to pacers successfully. 
Then there are quite a number, like Jay-Eye-See, 2:10 trotting 
and 2:06^ pacing, that have made fast records at both gaits. 

At one time the pacing horse Blue Bull stood at the head of 
all sires of trotters in this country, and it is not known or be- 
lieved that he possessed a single drop of trotting blood. He was 
a very fast pacer and could do nothing else, and a large percent- 
age of the mares bred to him were pacers, and practically all the 
others had more or less pacing blood, but his great roll of trot- 
ters in the 2:30 list was the wonder of all horsemen of that 
period. Certainly the average of the elements in his inheritance 
would place him very low in theory, but in practice he struck 
back to some ancestor that was strongly prepotent. The trouble 
in his case is practically the same as in all other pacing stallions 
— the inheritance traces back to a period more remote than any 
of the fast trotting stallions, but at intervals it has been neglected 
and not developed until it has become weak and uncertain from 
lack of use. The same may be said of the Copperbottoms, 
Corbeaus, Flaxtails, Hiatogas, Davy Crockets, Pilots, Rainbows, 
Redbucks, St. Clairs, Tippoos, and Tom Hals, as well as other 
heads of minor families that will be considered in their proper 
places. 

The changes that have been wrought in the status of the pacer 
have been truly wonderful. Instead of being hidden away as an 



186 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

outcast and a disgrace to the family, condemned to a life of in- 
feriority and drudgery, he has been brought out and exhibited to 
the public as a son and heir and the equal of the best. In looking 
back over the trotting records of twenty years ago, any one will 
be surprised to observe that at all the leading meetings of the 
whole country there were no pacing contests. Occasionally at 
the minor and local meetings of the middle Western States, a 
pacing contest would be given for a small purse, in which local 
and obscure horses only would be engaged. Very naturally the 
owners of pacing horses protested against this practical exclusion 
of their favorites from the trotting meetings, and employed all 
their energies in begging for admission. "When they began to be 
really clamorous the managers of trotting tracks argued that 
there could be no profit to them in opening pacing contests, for 
nobody cared about seeing a pacing match, that the entries would 
not fill, and especially that there would be no betting, that, con- 
sequently, the pool-sellers would have nothing to divide with the 
management. As the receipts for pool-selling and all other 
gambling privileges were making the track managers rich, they 
were very slow about admitting an untried element that might 
diminish their profits. But gradually and patiently the pacers 
worked their way into the exclusive circle, and when they ap- 
peared everybody, especially in the Eastern States, was surprised 
to see what excellent horses they were and the terrific speed they 
showed. Instead of the typical pacer, as formed in the popular 
mind, with the low head, bull neck, low croup, hairy legs, ex- 
uberant mane and tail, and generally "Canuck" all over, that 
would stop at the end of the first half-mile, here was an array of 
horses that in make-up and gameness would average just as well 
as the same number of trotters. This was a revelation to great 
multitudes of people, and from that time forward the pacer had 
a fair show, on his merits. For hundreds of years the pacer, 
with very few exceptions, has been able to show a little higher 
rate of speed than the trotter. When Flora Temple smashed all 
records in 1859 by trotting in 2:19f, Pocahontas had drawn a 
wagon, five years earlier, in 2:17^; and when Maud S. trotted in 
1885 in 2:08|, this beat all laterals as well as diagonals, except 
Johnson, who the year before had paced in 2:06:^. In 1894 Alix 
trotted a mile in 2:03f ,which stands the best at this writing, but the 
same year Robert J. paced in 2:01^, and John R, Gentry in 2:00-^ 
in 1896, 



KELATIOXS OF THE AMEKICAN PACER TO THE PACER. 187 

It is not my purpose here to undertake to discuss the reasons 
for the almost continuous supremacy of the pacer over the trot- 
ter, for there is no data from which I might frame a conclusion 
that would really ''hold water." At best, therefore, I can only 
suggest two or three thoughts. Speed at the pace is older, and has 
been longer in the process of development, than speed at the 
trot. In 1747 pacing races had then been fashionable in Mary- 
land, and had been carried on in that colony time out of mind, 
but we have no trace of trotting races. One year later (1748) 
"running, pacing and trotting" races had become so numerous 
and so common in the colony of New Jersey that they were de- 
clared a nuisance and suppressed by the legislative authority. 
My impression from the language of the act is that it was aimed 
chiefly at the running and the pacing races, and that the trotters 
were not very numerous. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion 
that this racing mania in New Jersey took its rise about 1665, 
when Governor Nicolls established the Newmarket race course 
on Long Island, and if so, it had been growing in strength for 
over eighty years, and if we add the time from then till now we 
find that the speed of the pacer has been going on almost 
continuously for over two hundred years in our own 
country. There is another fact entering into the rural life 
of colonial times that- must not be left out of consideration. 
The pacer was the universal saddle horse, and the trotter never 
was tolerated for that service. Every farmer's son had his saddle 
horse, and when two of them met what so natural and common as 
to determine then and there which was the faster, if a little 
stretch of road offered? In these neighborhood rivalries, if not 
in actual racing, the instinct of speed at the pace was kept alive 
and developed, from generation to generation. If I am right in 
this little study of colonial life, we can understand that the in- 
heritance of speed at the pace has come down to our own time 
through a great many generations of pacers, and hence the pace 
is the faster gait. There is one fact in our own experience that 
seems to sustain this with great force, and that is the small 
amount of "pounding" that the pacer requires in order to reach 
the full development of his powers. There is no need of driving 
a pacer to death in order to teach him how to pace, for he already 
knows how to pace, and all that is needed in the way of training 
is to get him into high condition. It may be possible that the 
lateral action is faster than the diagonal because it is less compli- 



188 THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 

cated, but I can see no anatomical reason for this, as the two legs 
in both gaits act as one leg. The only difference I can see in 
joractice is that the trotter has more up-and-down motion than 
the pacer; that is, he bounds in every revolution, describing a 
series of depressed curves with his back as he moves, while the 
pacer rises less from the ground with his hind feet and seems to 
glide instead of bound; in other words, there is less action thrown 
away by the pacer than the trotter, and this may arise from 
the more complex action in the diagonal than in the lateral 
motion. 

The pacer has reached a higher acJclivity than the trotter, but 
he is not so well assured in his footing. His present popularity 
and his upward flight are phenomenal, but the causes that have 
sent him there are abnormal and not lasting. In his best in- 
dividualities he is simply a gambling machine when in the hands 
of unscrupulous men, to be manipulated in whatever direction 
he will make the most money. Eacing, at whatever gait, is not 
necessarily demoralizing nor disreputable, but when it falls into 
the control of the "professionals" it becomes both. So long as 
it remains under the control of the breeders it is not only honor- 
able and legitimate for them to develop and race their stock, 
but it is a necessary adjunct to their business, for they must thus 
bring their products before the public, if they expect to 
make their business pay. Breeders should not own race tracks, 
or if they do, they should have no part nor lot in the percentage 
uniformly paid fdr the gambling privilege. 

The history of racing in this country teaches over and over 
again that whenever the breeding and racing interest falls into 
the control of gamblers, down goes the whole interest and honest 
men suffer with the rogues. The grasping track managers are 
to-day complaining loudly that they cannot afford to give trot- 
ting meetings unless they are allowed to bring in the pool-sellers 
and make them divide the "swag" with the track. Every at- 
tempt by legislatures to make gambling on races a felony outside 
the race track and a virtue inside is a most arrant humbug and 
most destructive in its results. It makes the race track a cess- 
pool of every vice, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest 
man and decent woman. The moral sense of the people all over 
this country is being aroused, and if public gambling cannot be 
suppressed on horse races, then history will repeat itself and 
horse racing Avill be wiped out. The gamblers and their friends 



KELATIOXS OF THE AMEKICAN PACER TO THE TROTTER. ISO' 

will sneer at this as ''puritanism," but no difference about the 
name — it will come. 

But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to 
the life and moral character of young men, as well as to the 
material interests of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly 
comes within my province to discuss it further in this place, and 
therefore I will return to the consideration of the pacer. As 
the historical periodicity is now looming in sight when the moral 
sense of the people will command the suppression of racing of 
every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as to 
what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any 
value as a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are 
past as a means of travel, except by a few about the parks of the 
cities, and however uppish and handsome he may be, he is not 
and never will be a desirable driving horse in harness. AVe have 
already used sufficient of his blood to create the American Saddle 
Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce "'after his kind" we 
need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the trotter his 
blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we 
desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, 
and if, as I am inclined to believe. Messenger's power to transmit 
trotting speed came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is. 
the only source of that speed. Under the condition of things as 
here foreshadowed he will probably sink back into the obscurity 
from which he emerged twenty years ago. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE. 

The saddle gaits come only from the pacer — Saddle gaits cultivated three hun- 
dred years ago — Markham on the saddle gaits — The military seat the best 
— The unity of the pace and trot — Gaits analyzed — Saddle Horse Register — 
Saddle horse progenitors — Denmark not a thoroughbred horse. 

In the preceding chapters the pacer has been considered from 
the standpoint of his antiquity, history, speed at the pace, and 
his contributions to speed at the trot. We now come to consider 
him as the founder of the best and most delightful type of saddle 
horses in the world. This estimate of his quality and value had 
a solid foundation in the judgment and habits of our ancestors at 
an early period in our history. When our patriotic forbears 
entered upon the struggle for independence, they were fully 
alive to the necessity of foreign sympathy and aid. For this 
purpose agents were sent abroad to enlist the good feelings and, 
if possible, secure co-operation of foreign governments, especially 
that of France. Mr. Silas Dean was sent to Paris, and in a com- 
munication to the secret committee of Congress, under date of 
November 28, 1776, he writes: "I wish I had here one of your 
best saddle horses, of the American or Rhode Island breed — a 
present of that kind would be money well laid out with a certain 
personage." This was probably intended as a present to Marie 
Antoinette, or some other person having great influence at court. 
It further indicates that "the American or Rhode Island Saddle 
Horse" was at that period, in Mr. Dean's opinion at least, the 
best in the world. (See Dean Papers, New York Historical 
Society, Vol. I., p. 377.) 

To the man of average intelligence and candor on horse sub- 
jects it certainly is not necessary to enter upon an elaborate dis- 
cussion to show that the saddle gaits come from the pacer, but a 
certain class of writers, who neither declare nor attempt to prove 
their position, constantly imply that the saddle gaits came from 
the "thoroughbred." As it is better, therefore, to make every- 



THE AMEEICAN SADDLE HOKSE. 191 

thing plain as we go along, I will very briefly consider this 
point. Twelve years ago, through Wallace's Monthly, I presented 
the following questions to all gentlemen interested in saddle- 
horse affairs and acquainted with saddle-horse history: "Are all 
the tribes and families noted for their saddle qualities descended 
in whole or in part from pacing ancestry?" In order to cover 
the whole question, no difference from what standpoint it might 
be considered, I added the following: '"Has any family or sub- 
family of saddle horses come from pure running ancestry and 
without any admixture of pacing blood?" To these questions 
Major Hord, then editor of the Spirit of the Farm, at Nashville, 
Tennessee, a gentleman of very wide and accurate knowledge on 
this subject, but strongly in favor of running blood, made the 
following response through his paper: 

" We can only draw conclusions from established facts in reference to these 
questions, for we do not think they can be answered otherwise, as the original 
ancestry of our best saddle families is more or less clouded iu obscurity. It is 
an established fact, deuionstrated by experience, that in order to get a saddle 
horse, the quickest and most successful way is to get in the pacing blood; it 
matters not how good or bad the other blood may be, a strong dash of pacing 
blood will almost invariably improve the animal for saddle purposes, and never, 
under any circumstances, does a pacing cross detract from an animal's qualities 
for the saddle. Judging from these facts, we conclude that all our saddle 
families are descended, at least in part, from pacing ancestry. On the other 
hand, all our best saddle families have a strong infusion of thoroughbred run- 
ning blood. This blood, however, is valuable only for the courage, bone, and 
finish it gives the animal, for it imparts none of the saddle gaits; and while 
we have secured the best results in breeding the saddle horse by mixing the 
running and pacing blood, we have observed that too much running blood in 
the stallion detracts from his success as a sire of saddle stock. As a rule, no 
trainer's skill can make a good saddle horse out of a thoroughbred runner, 
whereas if you mix two or more strong pacing crosses on top of the running 
blood, a child can gait the produce to the saddle. We have sometimes seen 
good saddle horses that were thoroughbreds, but have never seen a perfect one. 
Our observation and experience lead us to the conclusion that the natural saddle 
gaits come from the pacers, but to the runner we are indebted for the size, 
style, bone and finish of our saddle stock." 

In this reply, when the author says "all of our saddle families 
are descended, at least in part, from pacing ancestry," and when 
he adds to this that "running blood imparts none of the saddle 
gaits," he has answered both questions very fully and very satis- 
factorily. The argument that running blood gives bone and 
finish, and all that, is very well as a theory of breeding, but it 



19'/J THE HORSE OF AMERICA^ 

has nothing to do with the questions propounded. As all 
families of saddle horses have pacing blood, and as there is no 
family without it, it may be taken as settled that the saddle 
gaits come from the pacer. 

I notice that at least one of the present saddle gaits was culti- 
vated more than three hundred years ago. Mr. Ge'rvaise Mark- 
ham, a writer of the sixteenth century, and probably the second 
English author on the horse, says: ''If you buy a horse for 
pleasure the amble is the best, in which you observe that he 
moves both his legs on one side together, neat with complete de- 
liberation, for if he treads too short he is apt to stumble, if too 
large to cut and if shuffling or rowling he does it slovenly and 
besides rids no ground. If your horse be designed for hunting, 
a racking pace is most expedient, which little differs from the 
amble, only is more active and nimble, whereby the horse ob- 
serves due motion, but you must not force him too eagerly, lest 
being in confusion he lose all knowledge of what you design him 
to, and so handle his legs carelessly." The orthography of the 
work "rack" as used by Markham is "wrack," and this is the 
only place I have met with it in any of the old authors. Webster 
defines the word "rack" as "a fast amble,'* but Markham uses it 
in contradistinction from the amble. It is worthy of note here 
that the word "rack" is older than the word "pace," in its use 
as designating the particular gait of the horse, and through all 
the centuries it has been retained. Of all the gaits that are 
subsidiary to the pace and derived from that gait, the rack is 
probably the most common, and in many sections of the country 
the pacer is called a racker. Eacking is often designated as 
"single -footing," and in this gait as well as in the running walk 
and fox trot, there are four distinct impacts in the revolution. 
It follows, then, that they are not susceptible of a very high rate 
of speed. 

In all the services which the horse renders and in all the rela- 
tions which he bears to his master, there is no relaiion in which 
they can be made to appear to such great mutual advantage as 
when the one animal is carrying the other on his back. There 
is no occasion on which a beautiful horse looks so well as when 
gracefully mounted and skillfully handled by a lady or gentle- 
man. And, I wijl add, there is no occasion when a lady or gen- 
tleman, who is at home in the saddle, looks so well as when 
mounted on a beautiful and well-trained American horse. Eng- 



THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE. 193 

land has no saddle horses, and never can have any till she secures 
American blood and adopts American methods. The shortening 
of the stirrups and the swinging up and down like a tilt-hammer 
is not, with our English friends, a matter of choice, but a neces- 
sity to avoid being jolted to death. Their very silly imitators, 
on this side, think they can't afford to be out of the fashion, be- 
cause "it's English, you know." For safety, true gentility, and 
comfort the military seat is the only seat, and if you have a 
horse upon Avhich you can't keep that seat without punishment, 
he is no saddle horse. If your doctor tells you that your liver 
needs shaking up, mount an English trotting horse, but if you 
ride for pleasure and fresh air, get a horse that is bred and 
trained to the saddle gaits. There is just as much difference be- 
tween the two horses as the difference between a springless wagon 
on a cobble-stone pavement and a richly upholstered coach on 
the asphalt. 

The American Saddle Horse has an origin as well as a history. 
His origin dates back thousands of years, and his history has 
been preserved in art and in letters since the beginning of the 
Christian era. For centuries he was the fashionable horse in 
England, and the only horse ridden by the nobility and gentry. 
Away back in the reign of Elizabeth it was not an uncommon 
thing to use hopples to teach and compel trotters to pace, just 
as in our day hopples are often used to teach and compel pacers 
to trot. In the early settlement of the American colonies pacers 
were far more numerous than trotters, and this continued to be 
the case till after the War of the Eevolution. The great influx 
of running blood after that period practically banished the pacer 
to the western frontiers, where a remnant has been preserved for 
the uses of the saddle; and on account of his great speed and 
gameness he has again returned to popular favor in our own day. 

The walk and the canter, or short gallop, are gaits that are 
common to all breeds and varieties of horses, but what are known 
as "the saddle gaits" are derived wholly from the pace and are 
therefore considered modifications or variations of the pace. In 
regions of country where the saddle horse is bred and developed 
these gaits are well known among horsemen and riders as the 
rack (single-footing), the running-walk, and the fox-trot. These 
gaits are not easily described so as to be understood without an 
example before the eye. The rack is the most easily explained 
so as to be comprehended, and it is sometimes called the slow 



194 THE HOESE OF AMERICA, 

pace. In this movement the hind foot strikes the ground an 
instant before the fore foot on the same side, then the other two 
feet are moved and strike in the same way; thus there are four 
strokes in the revolution, in pairs. As each foot has its own 
stroke we see the appositeness of the phrase "single-footing." 
The four strokes are in pairs, as one, two — three, four, and in many 
cases as the speed of the horse increases the interval between the 
strokes is lost and the horse is at a clean rapid pace. As a mat- 
ter of course none of these gaits in which the horse makes four 
strokes instead of two in the revolution can be speedy. They 
are not developed nor cultivated for speed alone, but for the com- 
fort and ease of the rider and the change from one to another for 
the rest and ease of the horse. 

These "saddle gaits" are always derivatives from the pace, and 
I never have seen one that did not possess more or less pacing 
blood. A careful examination of the first and second volumes of 
"The National Saddle Horse Register" establishes this fact be- 
yond all possible contradiction. This work is a very valuable 
contribution to the horse history of the country, but it is a mis- 
fortune that more care has not been taken in the exclusion of 
fictitious crosses in a great multitude of pedigrees. This trouble 
is specially apparent among the supposed breeding of many of 
the old stallions that are inserted as "Foundation Stock." The 
tendency throughout seems to be to cover up and hide away the 
very blood to which we are indebted for the saddle horse, and to 
get in all the blood possible that is in direct antagonism to the 
foundation of the saddle gaits. It can be accepted as a funda- 
mental truth in horse lore, that from the day the first English 
race horse was imported into this country to the present day, 
which covers a period of about one hundred and fifty years, 
nobody has ever seen, either in England or in this country, a 
thoroughbred horse that was a pacer. When the old race horse 
Denmark covered the pacing daughter of the pacer Cockspur, 
the pacing blood of the dam controlled the action and instincts 
of the colt, and in that colt we have the greatest of saddle- 
horse sires, known as Gaines' Denmark. 

As this horse Denmark was by far the greatest of all saddle- 
horse progenitors, and as his superiority has been widely 
attributed to his "thoroughbred" sire Denmark, the son of im- 
ported Hedgford, I have taken some pains to examine his pedi- 
gree. His sire was thoroughbred, his dam and grandam were 



THE AMERICAJSr SADDLE HORSE. 195 

mongrels, and the remoter crosses were impossible fictions. The 
fact that he ran four miles cuts no figure as evidence of purity 
of blood, for horses were running four miles in this country be- 
fore the first "thoroughbred" was born. Of the fourteen stallions 
that are inserted as "Foundation Stock," it is unfortunate that 
the choice seems to be j)ractically restricted to the State of Ken- 
tucky, while the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee, to say 
nothing of Illinois, Missouri, etc., have produced numbers of 
families and tribes that are much more prominent and valuable 
from the true saddle-horse standpoint than some that appear in 
the select list of fourteen. It is doubtless true, however, that 
more attention has been paid to symmetry and style, and to the 
correct development and culture of the true saddle gaits, in 
Kentucky than in any of the other States. "With such horses as 
Oaines' Denmark, John Dillard, Tom Hal, Brinker's Drennon, 
Texas, Peters' Halcorn, and Copperbottom the list is all right, 
but the other half-dozen are mostly young and have hardly been 
heard of outside of their own immediate neighborhoods. It is a 
notable fact that old Pacing Pilot does not appear as the pro- 
genitor of a saddle family. 

In considering the comparative merits of the leading founda- 
tion stallions we find that Denmark was not a success in any 
direction except as the sire of handsome and stylish saddle 
horses. John Dillard may not have been the equal of Denmark 
in the elegance of his progeny, but he far surpassed him in his 
valuable relations to the trotter. His daughters became quite 
famous as the producers of trotters of a high order, and they have 
over twenty in the 2:30 list. The Tom Hals have developed 
phenomenal speed at the pace, and a great deal of it, interspersed 
with but few trotters. 

Of late years many owners of the very best material for saddle 
stock have given their whole attention to the development of 
speed, either at the lateral or diagonal motion, because it has 
been deemed more profitable. In thus selecting, breeding and 
developing for extreme speed, the adaptation to saddle purposes 
has been lost or bred out. While it is true that some colts come 
into the world endowed with all the saddle gaits, it is also true 
that skill and patience are requisite in teaching the saddle horse 
good manners. There is no imaginable use to which the horse 
can be put where he will show his beautiful form and thorough 
education to so great advantage as under the saddle. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA. 

The romances of fifty years ago — Was tlie borse indigenous to this country? — 
The theories of the paleontologists not satisfactory — Pedigrees of over two 
millions of years too long — Outlines of horses on prehistoric ruins evi- 
dently modern — The linguistic test among the oldest tribes of Indians fails 
to discover any word for "Horse" — The horses abandoned west of the 
Mississippi by the followers of De Soto about 1541 were the progenitors of 
the wild horses of the plains. 

Fifty years ago there was much that was romantic and mys- 
terious in our conceptions of the real character and origin of the 
vast herds of wild horses that abounded on our Western plains, and 
the same remark applies to their congeners on the pampas of 
South America. The wild horse and the Indian opened up a 
most inviting field for the writers of romance, and current litera- 
ture was flooded with "Wild Western" stories, with the horse and 
the Indian as the leading characters. We are now one genera- 
tion, at least, this side of the time when stories of this kind are 
either sought or read, but we are not past the period when the 
origin or introduction of the horse on this continent may be con- 
sidered with interest and profit. Before touching upon the wild 
horse, as known in our early history, however, it may be well to 
consider, briefly, the question as to whether he may not have 
been indigenous to this continent. 

In our generation the spade has become a wonderful developer 
of the truths of ancient history. The buried and forgotten cities 
of the old world are being unearthed in Europe, Asia and Africa, 
and thousands of works of art and learning that had vanished 
from the face of the earth are again restored to the knowledge 
of the human race. In a kindred branch of investigation the 
geologists and paleontologists have been delving into the bowels 
of the earth — not to find what previous generations of men had 
left behind them, but to find what life was myriads of ages before 
man was placed on the earth. Out of the rocks they have. 



THE AVILD HORSES OF AMERICA. 197 

literally, quarried many strange examples of animal life that 
have been buried millions of years, and hundreds of feet below 
the present surface. Among these strange petrefactions that 
were thus buried when the earth was young, there is one that has 
been widely exploited as the "Primal Horse," that is, the animal 
from which our present horse was finally evolved. There are 
three or four specimens of this petrefaction now on exhibition in 
this country, the first having been discovered by Professor Marsh, 
of Yale College, and now in the museum of that institution. 
Nearly twenty years ago Professor Huxley, the great English 
naturalist, delivered a lecture in this city on the Marsh petrefac- 
tion as his text, in which he told us that the "Primal Horse" 
had, originally, five toes on each foot, that after an indeterminate 
geological period he lost the two outside toes on the hind feet, 
iind after another million years, more or less, he lost the outside 
toes of the fore feet, thus leaving him ready to go on developing 
the middle toe into the foot and hoof of the horse while the out- 
side toes disappeared. In proof of this he offered the fact that 
horses of this day have splint bones on each side of the leg, 
under the knee, and these bones are the remnants of the outside 
toes. This was the explanation which the learned professor gave 
in disposing of the outside toes when there were but three toes 
on each foot, but he failed to explain what had become of the 
outside toes when there were five on each foot, and there his 
whole explanation toppled to the ground. 

In the American Museum of Natural History, in this city, there 
is a very fine representative of this particular type of petrefac- 
tions. It is about fifteen inches high, with a head that is dis- 
proportionately large, and a tail that is long and slender, sug- 
gesting that of a leopard. On each fore foot this animal has four 
toes, or claws, as we might call them, and on each hind foot 
three claws. With these claws this little animal might dig in 
the ground, or he might climb a tree when necessary for either 
safety or food. Each one of these toes nas its own distinct 
column of joints and bone extending to the knee, and there is no 
material difference in the size and strength of these different 
columns. Now, with three toes and three columns only, we can 
accept or reject, as we please. Professor Huxley's method of get- 
ting the two superfluous ones out of sight by pointing to the 
splint bones on the leg of a modern horse and saying these are 
the remnants of the outside toes. But, in the meantime, neither 



198 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

Mr. Huxley nor anybody else has told us what became of the- 
outside toes and their columns in cases where there were five 
toes. It will not do to chuck these out of sight and say nothing 
about them; they must be accounted for or the theory fails. In 
the specimen now under examination the fore feet are each sup- 
plied with four toes, and each toe is supported by its own distinct 
column of bone. Here we meet with the same difficulty as in 
the case of five toes, for we have more material than the Huxley 
theory is able to provide for. This theory has been generally 
accepted among specialists, in this line of investigation, and they 
all point to the splint bones, as already stated, as the remnants 
of the two toes, adhering to the main column. This leaves the 
one superfluous toe wholly unprovided for, and thus the theory 
discredits itself and leaves the question in a shape that is entirely 
unsatisfactory and unacceptable to the understanding. 

The teeth of this specimen, in their shape and arrangement, 
very strongly resemble the teeth of the horse.' Upon this one 
fact is placed the chief reliance to sustain the claim that this was 
the "Primal Horse," but this fact, when taken without the sup- 
port of other facts, simply proves that the animal was herbivor- 
ous, subsisting on the same kind of food as the horse, but it does- 
not prove that he was a horse. The teeth are an excellent start- 
ing point, and we admit their arrangement and resemblance to 
the teeth of the horse, but the rules of comparative anatomy, as 
well as common sense, require that at some other point or points 
there should be at least a suggestion of resemblance. In this 
case there is absolutely no resemblance, but a very marked and 
unmistakable divergence. The foot of this little animal, fifteen 
inches high, bears no more resemblance to the foot of the horse 
than the foot of the dog bears to the foot of the horse. Indeed, 
the foot of the specimen before us, whether provided with three, 
four or five claws, very strikingly resembles the foot of the dog. 
The arrangement of the different specimens of the feet, commenc- 
ing with the smallest with four toes and ending with the perfect 
and full-grown foot of the horse as we know him, intended to 
illustrate the process of evolution, is a very interesting study, but 
when you have done with the last foot with claws and reach for- 
ward for the first foot with a hoof, you find there is an impassable 
gulf between them, over which the theory of Evolution has not 
been able to construct a bridge. But there is another considera- 
tion that is final and that cannot be overcome by any theory 



THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA. 199 

•whatever. According to the chronology widely accepted among 
geologists, this little animal was buried in the sand more than 
two millions of years ago, and in a grave more than a hundred 
feet below the general surface of the country in which he was 
found. In some great upheaval or cataclysm of the earth's sur- 
face, this little animal, with all his contemiaoraries, perished, and 
there perished with him all possibility of propagating his race. 
It is only a waste of time, therefore, to speculate upon what a 
certain race of animals might have produced in our day, when 
they were all cut ofE two millions of years ago. With this dis- 
position of the little animal with the variety of toes, quarried 
from the rocks and by courtesy here called the "Primal Horse," 
we reach another prehistoric epoch in our inquiry, but much, 
less remote than the one just considered. 

From the incredible numbers of wild horses on our Western 
plains and on the pampas of South America, at a very early 
pariod in history, it became a question of some interest with 
many thinking men as to whether the horse was not indigenous 
ou this continent. It is within the knowledge of everybody that 
this continent was inhabited by a mysterious and unknown race 
of people long before it was visited by Europeans. These mys- 
terious people seem to have been driven out by the fierce and 
warlike savages who occuplied the country at the time of its dis- 
covery, and even they knew nothing about the people who had 
preceded them. In very many localities the vanished people left 
behind them marks, numerous and unmistakable, that they had 
made considerable progress in the arts of civilized life. Writers 
have generally designated them as "the Mound Builders," be- 
cause :hey heaped great tumuli of earth over the graves of their 
distinguished dead, but the real "Mound Builders" did far more 
than this, for with immense labor they built great, strong de- 
fenses for their protection against their enemies. When we go 
further West and South, into the fertile valleys among the moun- 
tains, we find still later traces of these unknown people in the 
ruins of buildings and dwellings erected, with infinite labor, 
traces of irrigating canals, etc., but we still fail to come up with 
them, or any trace of their history. In that region ruins of this 
type are designated as "Aztec Ruins," but this title puts us no 
further on the way of who the builders were. In 1877 a corre- 
spondent of a Colorado newspaper, who seemed to write intelli- 
gently and candidly, described some of those ruins which he 



200 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

found in the valley of the Las Animas, in Southwestern Colorado. 
He speaks of a valley fifteen miles long and seven miles wide, on 
the Animas River, and says this valley was covered with dwellings 
built of stone, but he gives particular attention to a row of build- 
ings built of sandstone laid in adobe mud. These buildings are 
about three hundred feet long and three hundred feet apart, as 
I understand the writer, and extend a distance of six thousand 
feet. The outside walls are four feet thick and the inside ones 
from one and a half to three feet thick; there are rooms still left 
and walls remaining that indicate a building four stories high. 
In some of the rooms there are writings that never have been 
deciphered, and in one of them there are drawings of tarantulas, 
centipedes, horses and men. The word "horses" riveted my at- 
tention, and connected with it there were several things to be 
considered. First, were the drawings really intended to represent 
horses? Second, if so might they not have been placed there long 
after the builders had disappeared and in recent years? Third, if 
placed there by the builders, what was their date, and were they 
before or after the introduction of the horse into Mexico by the 
Spaniards? The possibility of ever obtaining any satisfactory 
information about these drawings and their date seemed very 
remote, but after watching and waiting for about eighteen years, 
I have recently received two letters that settle the whole matter 
so far as these particular ruins are concerned. 

Mr. Charles McLoyd, a very intelligent gentleman of Durango, 
Colorado, who has made a special study of the Cliff Dwellers and 
kindred subjects, in that part of the world, writing under date 
of January 10, 1895, says: 

" I am unable to inform you in regard to the pictures on those particular 
ruins, but can say that in no other locality have 1 found pictures of horses or 
anything to indicate that these prehistoric races had any knowledge of the 
animal. If such pictures existed we would be unable to determine anything 
definite from them; or in other words, it would not show that the horse was 
on this continent before the Spaniards brought him, but rather that the people 
who constructed the buildings lived here after the Spaniards came. I have 
often seen pictures of horses on the walls of canons, but there is no question 
but they were the work of the present Indians. We often find associated with 
them pictures of railroad trains, etc., that indicate that some of them are of 
very recent date. To sum the matter up, would say that, so far, there is no 
evidence that these races had any knowledge of the horse, or had ever seen 
the Spaniards." 

Mr. John A. Koontz, of Aztec, New Mexico, writes under 



THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA. 201 

date of January 24, 1895. He knows all about the ruins in ques- 
tion, for he owns the land on wliich they are situated, and puts 
the whole matter very clearly, as follows: 

" I know nothing of the drawings of horses and other animals on the walls 
of the ' Aztec Ruins ' here that Mr. Wallace speaks of. I think the drawings 
were all in the imagination of the correspondent to whom Mr. Wallace refers. 
I have been familiar with the ruios for fourteen years and this is the first time 
I have ever heard of any drawings of horses on any of the walls. There are 
drawings on some rocks some miles from the ruins, but from their naiure I 
hav^e considered them the work of the modern Indians. These ruins were 
visited by a party of archeologists two years ago, who spent several weeks 
here, and made a survey, with maps and general drawings of ihe same. They 
decided that the main building had, originally, over seven hundred rooms." 

These letters are conclusive, so far as the region of the Las 
Animas is concerned, and with that region knocked out there is 
not enough left to justify further search for evidence that the 
prehistoric races had any knowledge of the horse. Nothing re- 
mained then but the linguistic test, and in 1885 I had such an 
opportunity for applying this test as may never occur again. 
Tliis test formulated itself in my mind, in this shape: ''Did any 
of the nations or tribes of the aboriginal inhabitants of this con- 
tinent have a word in their language indicating a horse?" 
When in California I applied to Mr. Bancroft, the compiler and 
publisher of the great documentary history of the Pacific coast, 
who then had a large corps of skilled translators at work on his 
famous compilation, and submitted my question. He introduced 
me to his principal linguist, who knew not only Spanish, Eng- 
lish and other modern languages, but also the language of the 
Indians of the coast, the mountains and the plains, of the period 
covered by the question. The question did not seem to be new 
to him, and he answered with the candor and conscientiousness 
of a man who knew what he was saying, that there was no word in 
any of the Indian tongues, ancient or modern, that represented 
the horse. This settled the question of the supposed prehistoric 
character and rank of the horse, and we are thus driven to accept 
the infinitesimally small number left behind by Cortez, Nunez 
and De Soto as the seed from which sprang the countless thou- 
sands of wild horses that for generations roamed the Western 
plains. 

The story of the Conquest of Mexico is full of blood and 
cruelty, but as we have nothing to do with any part of the story 



202 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

except so much of it as relates to the introduction of the horse to 
the continent of North America, it will require but small space 
to tell it. Oprtez sailed from Cuba for Yucatan, Feburary, 1519, 
with an army of six hundred and sixty-three men, two hundred 
Indians and sixteen horses. Tliis wholly inadequate supply of 
cavalry was the weak place in his venture, but the horses could 
not be had in Cuba, without paying an incredible price. Those 
he was able to secure cost from four to five hundred pesos de oro 
each. The j^jeso was the Spanish dollar. The expedition was 
nominally fitted out for Yucatan, but its real aim was the heart 
of Mexico. In his first fight with the Indians near the coast, 
men mounted on horses were feared by the natives as monstrous 
apparitions. This overwhelming fear of the horse may seem to 
some of my readers as overdone by the historian, but it seems to 
have been the common experience of all the different nations and 
tribes of Indians wherever the horse made his first appearance in 
battle. In the first battle two of the horses were killed, and in 
the second another was killed, and all that remained were more 
or less severely wounded. Cortez was afterward joined by Alva- 
rado, at Vera Cruz, with twenty horses and one hundred and fifty 
men. In making his official reports directly to the home govern- 
ment in Spain instead of the governor of Cuba, Cortez gave mor- 
tal offense to that dignitary, and he sent out an armada under 
Narvaez to supersede Cortez and return him in chains to Cuba. 
This armada consisted of eighteen vessels, carrying nine hundred 
men, eighty of whom were cavalry. After some diplomacy, 
Cortez, feeling that with his little handful of men he was wholly 
unable to meet Narvaez, he did all he could to avoid a conflict. 
Each party knew the exact strength of the other, and as Narvaez 
began to threaten, Cortez determined to fight for his rights and 
his liberty. He then had but five men mounted, but he took ad- 
vantage of the carelessness of his adversary, made a night attack 
in the midst of a tempest, and captured Narvaez and his whole 
army. The private soldiers of that day, like their commanders, 
had no idea or principle to right for except for plunder, and they 
were always ready to attach themselves to the most successful 
robber. Cortez was their ideal leader, and at once he liad a new 
army of devoted followers. He then had eighty-five mounted 
men, and he felt strong enough to hold and rule the great coun- 
try he had conquered. Mexico was conquered in 1521, and the 
news of the vast amount of treasure captured broiTght a greot 



THE "WILD HORSES OF AMERICAc 203 

•crowd of emigrants from Spain and from all her dominions. The 
Spaniards, like other nations of Southern Europe, kept their horses 
entire and whenever representatives of both sexes strayed away, 
reproduction would follow. As the country became more tranquil, 
and as the tide of European settlers kept pouring in, we can easily 
understand how the little bands of estrays should grow into larger 
bands and soon become as wild as though they had never seen a 
human being except to flee from him. 

The explorer. De Soto sailed for Florida in 1539, in search of 
gold. He had in his command Ave hundred and thirteen men, 
exclusive of sailors, and two hundred and thirty-seven horses, 
besides some for the purpose of bearing burdens, the number 
not given. In all his weary journey of three years he found the 
Indians active, hostile, and courageous fighters. In one of his 
first battles he lost twelve horses, and had seventy wounded. He 
pursued many phantoms in search of gold, in different directions, 
but his general course was westward and northwestward. He 
was the first European to discover the Mississippi Eiver, not far 
from the mouth of the Arkansas, and there he was buried in the 
middle of the river, to prevent the Indians from discovering he 
was dead and from desecrating his remains. His followers then 
determined to push on westward to Mexico, and reached as far as 
the borders of Texas, probably, when they became discouraged 
with the magnitude of the difficulties that surrounded them, and 
determined to return and seek an outlet from the wilderness by 
water. On this last Journey, west of the Mississippi, they suf- 
fered their greatest loss of horses. They had not been shod for 
more than a year, and a great many were lame and unable to 
travel. When the Spaniards had comi^leted their boats and were 
ready to leave the scenes of their sufferings and disasters, they 
turned loose upon the bank of the river their four or five remain- 
ing horses, which manifested great excitement, running up and 
down the bank neighing for their masters, as they sailed away. 
This alarmed the Indians and they ran into the water for safety. 

The Indians were afraid of the horses and the horses were 
afraid of the Indians. It seems to be a fact, observed in all the 
early intercourse of the Spaniards with the Indians, that uni- 
versally they had a kind of superstitious awe of the horse as a 
superior being, and it is probably due to this awe that the Indians 
did not utterly destroy every horse that fell out of the ranks or 
that escaped in the wilderness. As I understand the history of 



204 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

this terrible exploration, when the Spaniards crossed the Missis- 
sippi they had two hundred and fifty men and one hundred and 
fifty horses, and when they came back and were ready to sail 
they had but four or five horses left. It is fair, therefore, to 
conclude that the greater portion of these hundred and fifty head 
was scattered in the wilderness as they went out and as they re- 
turned. This provides a sufficient breeding basis for the count- 
less multitudes of descendants, and places that nucleus in the 
right region to nourish them in a feral state. 

While this exploration of De Soto seems to furnish a breeding 
basis of sufficient breadth to account for all the wild horses that 
have appeared on this continent, there is another consideration 
that we must not overlook, and that is the inborn tendency of 
the domestic horse to become wild when in wild associations. 
By turning to the chapter on the colony of Virginia you will see 
that there were many wild horses there at the beginning of the 
last century. On the frontiers, near the habitat of wild horses, 
they became a great nuisance to the settlers in ''coaxing" away 
their domestic horses and making them as wild as the wildest. 
These accretions to their strength from the domestic horse have 
been going on for generations, and thus the wild horse became 
conglomerate in the elements of his blood, with the Spanish 
traits still predominant. Fifty or a hundred years ago the pens 
of many writers were employed in idealizing "The Wild Horse of 
the Desert. " He was made the leading figure in many a romance, 
and the hero of many a triumph. Tom Thumb, the great trot- 
ter that was taken to England, astonished all the world with his 
speed and his endurance, and, following the fashion of the day, 
he was represented to have been caught wild on the Western 
plains. For many years the wild horse was the "fad" of Ameri- 
can writers, just as the Arabian was of English writers, and the 
writers on one side were Just about as far from intelligence and 
truth as those on the other. When, forty years ago, great droves 
of the half-breeds, Mustangs, were brought from the plains to 
the border prairie States, seeking a market, the scales began to 
drop from the eyes of the worshipers of the wild horse. They 
were homely little brutes, and they were as tough as whit-leather. 
But the countless multitudes that roamed at will over their 
grazing grounds, making the earth tremble when they moved, 
have dwindled down to a few insignificant bands, and the whole 
glamour around the wild horse of the desert has vanished. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTOKS. 

Messenger tlie greatest of all trotting progenitors — Record of pedigrees inEng- 
lisli Stud Booli — Pedigrees made from unreliable sources — Messenger's right 
male line examined — Flying Cbikiers' "mile in a minute" — Blaze short 
of being thoroughbred — Sampson, a good race horse — His size; short in 
his breeding — Engineer short also — Mambrino was a race horse with at 
least two pacing crosses; distinguished only as a progenitor of coach 
horses and fast trotters — Messenger's dam cannot be traced nor identified — 
Among all the horses claiming to be thomughbred he is the only one that 
founded a family of trotters — This fact conceded by eminent writers in 
attempting to find others. 

Having completed a brief historical sketch of horse history 
from the beginning, and many events connected therewith, we 
are now ready to consider the American Trotting Horse, as the 
culmination of what has been written. Tims far we have met 
with much pretentious nonsense, claiming to be history and 
written by men who never gave the subject the study of an 
honest hour. The horse is honest enough, but the rule seems 
to be almost universal that whenever men commence to write 
about him they are guided by their imagination and not by the 
facts. As to what we are to meet in the coming chapters, I can 
only say that, unfortunately, "the fathers have eaten sour grapes 
and the children's teeth are set on edge." The instinct to mis- 
represent has been transmitted, and I cannot promise that we 
will find any great moral improvement among the horsemen of 
our own country and generation. 

For more than three-quarters of a century, and indeed from 
the first trotting experiences of this country that have been pre- 
served, it has been the unanimous judgment of all who have 
given any thought or attention to the subject that the imported 
English horse, Messenger, was the great central source of trot- 
ting speed. As the years have rolled by this opinion has 
increased in strength until it has become an intelligent and 
demonstrated belief. When, forty years ago, a horse was found 



20G THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

able to trot a mile in two mini\tes and thirty seconds, the speed 
was deemed wholly phenomenal, but that speed has been in- 
creased, second by second, until we are now on the very brink of 
two minutes. In this process every second and fraction of a 
second that has been cut off has been so much additonal proof of 
the universal belief that Messenger was the chief progenitor of 
the American trotter. He is not the only source of trotting 
speed, but he is the chief source. Whence he derived this dis- 
tinctive power to transmit trotting speed will be made more 
clear as we proceed. His blood left no deep nor lasting impress 
upon the running horses of the country, and it is seldom- 
we meet with any trace of it in the running horse of to-day, but 
it is prominent and conspicuous at the winning post of every 
trotting track on this continent. This will be made apparent 
when we come to consider the details and the merits of the 
mighty tribes and families that have descended from him. 

Several years ago I promised to write a volume on "Messenger 
and his Descendants," and I have often been reminded of that 
unfulfilled promise, which I will here try to rsdeem. When that 
promise was made I had written many things about Messenger, 
but since then I have secured very many valuable facts that, I 
think, will far more than compensate for the delay. There is 
still much that is unknown and much that is only partially 
known of the origin and history of Messenger and his ancestors,, 
and in considering the questions that will arise as the discussion 
progresses, I will not submit to a slavish acceptance of what- 
ever has come down in the shape of stallion advertisements, or as 
unsupported traditions, and then recorded as facts by people who 
knew nothing about them, and made no effort to know. I shall 
look for the facts that are known to be facts, or such evidence as 
is reasonable and commends itself to an unbiased judgment, and 
then reach such conclusions as right reason shall dictate. The 
pedigree of Messenger, or rather the pedigree of Messenger's 
reputed grandam, appears in the English Stud Book in the 
editions of 1803 and 1827, in the following form: 

Regulus Mare (Sister to Figurante). Her dam by Starling, out of Snap's 
dam. 
JISS- k; f-by Herod (dam of Alert). } ^j^ y^^^^^^ 

1770, bl. c. Hyacinth, by Turf. ) 

1771, bl. c. Lematlian (aft. Mungo), by Marske. Lord Abingdon*. 



MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 207 

1773, — f. by Turf. ] 

1774. — f. b> Ditto (dam of Messenger). ! ^ . ftrosvenor 
1777, bl. f. by Dux. \ ^°^^ wrosvenor. 
1780, b. f. by Justice (dam of Equity). J 

1782, b. c. Vulcan, by Justice. Mr. Panton. 

1783, b. c. Savage, by Sweetbriar. ) 

1784 b. f. Ariel by Higli flyer (dam of Mr. ^ Mr. Bullock. 
Hamilton's Swindler, by Bagot). ) 

This is all we have of the pedigree of Messenger as recorded in 
the English Stud Book, and this record, on its face, has a very 
suspicious appearance. Messenger had run some races at New- 
market and a place must be provided for him in the Stud Book. 
He always ran as a son of Mambrino, and there is no doubt this 
is correct, as it so appeared in the Racing Calendar, long before 
the days of the Stud Book. But nobody, either then or later, 
seemed to know anything about his dam. Toward the close of 
this chapter I will give an exhaustive review of the many troubles 
in which these two fillies by Turf seem to be involved. 

Messenger was by Mambrino, he by Engineer, he by Sampson, 
he by Blaze, he by Flying Childers, and he by tlie Darley Ara- 
bian. We give the right male line here for the reason that there 
can be no doubt as to the accuracy of this line, for it has been 
preserved in contemporaneous racing records. The trouble, where 
any trouble exists, is all with the dams of these horses which at 
best are only matters of the most uncertain tradition. A writer 
in the Edinburgh Beview for July, 1864, covers the whole ground 
Avhen he says: "The early pedigrees (in the Stud Book) are but 
little to be relied upon, as they seem for the most part to have 
been taken from traditional accounts in the stable, from descrip- 
tions at the back of old pictures, and from advertisements, none 
of which had to pass muster at the Herald's College." This is 
in full accordance with our American experiences and it is en- 
tirely safe to say that the great body of our old American pedi- 
grees, especially in their remote extensions, are more or less ficti- 
tious. The industry of producing great pedigrees out of little 
or nothing has long been pursued on both sides of the water, and 
it would be very difficult to determine which side had the better 
of it. 

Before attempting to analyze the pedigree of Messenger, or 
rather that of his dam, with which the chief difficulty lies, we 
will go back to the head of the male line and consider each suc- 
cessive generation. The Darley Arabian, one of the most dis- 
tinguished of all the founders of the English thoroughbred horse. 



208 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

was brought from Aleppo, about the year 1710. He did not 
cover many mares except those of his owner in Yorkshire, but he 
was very successful. Childers, commonly called Flying Childers, 
was foaled 1715. He was got by the Darley Arabian out of 
Betty Leeds, a distinguished lightweight runner, by Careless. 
Childers was the most distinguished race horse of his day, and 
the fabulous story of his having run a mile in a minute was cir- 
culated, believed and written about for generations. He ran a 
trial against Almanzor and Brown Betty over the round course 
at Newmarket (three miles, six furlongs and ninety-three yards) 
in six minutes and forty seconds, "and it was thought," says the 
old record, "that he moved eighty-two feet and a half in a second 
.of time, which is nearly at the rate of one mile in a minute." 
This was the basis of the legend "A Mile in a Minute," and it 
has lived till our own day, just as many a traditional pedigree 
has lived. If we accept the time as given by the old chroniclers, 
of which we have very grave doubts, Childers ran at the rate of 
one minute and forty-five seconds to the mile, and he covered a 
distance of fifty feet and about two inches to the second of time. 
The pedigree of Childers on the maternal side is one of the old- 
est in the Stud Book, and we are not aware that any charges 
have ever been made against its substantial authenticity. 

Blaze, the son of Childers, was foaled 1733, and was out of a 
mare known as "The Confederate Filly," by Grey Grantham; her 
dam was by the Duke of Rutland's Black Barb, and her grandam 
was a mare of unknown breeding, called "Bright's Roan." Here 
the maternal line runs into the woods, but this is not the only 
defect in the pedigree, for the dam of Grey Grantham was also 
unknown. In order to give a clear idea of just how Blaze was 
bred, taking the Stud Book for our authority, we will here tabu- 
late the pedigree for a few crosses. 



Blaze 

(1733) 



Darley Arabian 

fCWlders Jt,,, , , j Careless. 

(Betty Leeds... j gj^t^r to Leeds. 

i„ ^ ., ( Browlow Turk. 
Grey Grantham Blood unknown. 
^ , , , Black Barb. 

Daughter of. . . - Wright's Roan, unknown. 



Certainly this horse cannot be ranked as thoroughbred under 
any rule, English or American, that has ever been formulated. 
Only three generations away we find two animals of hopelessly 



MESSENGER AXD HIS ANCESTORS. 209 

unknown breeding. Mr. Henry F. Euren, compiler of the Eng- 
lish Hackney Stud Book, has given Blaze a new place in horse 
genealogy, and this new place affects the American trotter, re- 
motely, outside of the line through Messenger. Mr. Lawrence, 
the best English authority on horse matters in the latter part of 
the last and the beginning of the present century, had main- 
tained, confessedly on tradition only, that Old Shales, the great 
fountain head of the English trotters of a hundred years ago, was 
a son of Blank, by Godolphin Arabian. On this point Mr. Euren 
has got farther back and found earlier evidence in printed form 
that Blaze and not Blank was the sire of Old Shales. We com- 
bated this claim for a time, but in the introduction to his Stud 
Book he has made out a very good case, and we have hardly a 
doubt but that he is correct. In speaking of the breeding of Shales, 
and of his dam being a "strong common-bred mare," he says: "It 
is of interest to examine the pedigree of the sire (Blaze) to deter- 
mine whether yet stronger racing or pacing elements existed on 
that side." After giving a tabulation of the pedigree he con- 
tinues: "There would thus appear to have been a large propor- 
tion of English (native) blood in the dam of Blaze, though no 
one can say what was its character — whether running, trotting, 
or ambling." In referring to the fact that Bellfounder was a 
descendant of Old Shales, the son of Blaze, Mr. Euren makes 
this practical application of the incident: 

" The fact that in tlie seventh generation from Blaze, on each side, the re- 
union of the blood in Rysdyk's Hambletonian, the sire of so many fast Ameri- 
can trotting horses, should have proved to be of the most impressive character, 
would appear to warrant the conclusion that there was a strong latent trotting 
tendency in the near ancestors, on one. if not on both, sides of Blaze." 

These two points from a very high English authority — that 
Blaze was not thoroughbred and that he was the sire of Shales, 
a great trotting progenitor, must have due weight in reaching 
sound conclusions. 

Sampson, the son of Blaze, was foaled 1745, and he has occu- 
pied a very prominent and at the same time unique place in run- 
ning-horse history. He was not only a great race horse, at heavy 
weights, but he was considered phenomenal in his size and 
strength, and in his lack of the appearance of a race horse. 
Some of his measurements have come down to us, and as they are 
reliable data as to what was considered a remarkably large and 



210 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

strong race horse a hundred and forty years ago, we will repro- 
duce them here in order that the curious may compare them with, 
the average race horse of this generation: 

Height on the withers, 15 hands 2 inches; dimensions of fore leg from the 
hair of the hoof to middle of fetlock joint, 4 inches; from fetlock joint to bend 
of the knee, 11 inches; from bend of knee to elbow, 19 inches; round fore leg 
below knee, narrowest part, Scinches; round hind leg, narrowest part, 9 inches. 

These measurements may not seem to merit any particular at- 
tention at this day, but a hundred and fifty years ago they were 
considered phenomenal in the race horse. But we are not left 
to the dry details of a certain number of inches and fractions of 
an inch upon which to base a just conception of the strength and 
substance of this horse. A number of historians have told us of 
the merriment among the grooms and jockeys when Sampson 
made his first appearance on the turf. The question was, "Has- 
Mr. Robinson brought a coach horse here to run for the plate?" 
The laugh was on the other side at Malton that day, however,, 
when the "coach horse," carrying one hundred and forty pounds,, 
won the plate in three heats. The distance was three miles, and 
Sampson was then five years old. At long distances and at high 
weights Sampson was a first-class race horse for his day. But, 
notwithstanding all this, we are told that his blood never became 
fashionable, for there was a widespread conviction that he was 
not running-bred on the side of his dam. The historians tell us. 
that he transmitted his own coarseness and lack of the true run- 
ning ty2ie in a marked degree, which was very evident in his 
grandson, Mambrino. 

His pedigree has been questioned from the day of his first 
appearance to the present time, and we have made a very careful 
study of all the facts at our command. In the first edition of 
his Stud Book (18(33) Mr. Weatherby gives his dam as by Hip; g. d. 
by Spark, son of Honeycomb Punch; g. g. d. by Snake and out of 
Lord D'Arcy's Queen. This has not been materially changed in 
any of the subsequent editions, and we think it may be taken for- 
granted that the horse was advertised under this pedigree. Mr. 
Weatherby commenced work on pedigrees in 1791, and avowedly 
accepted the best information he could get with regard to old 
pedigrees, regardless of the source. We are not aware that he- 
ever investigated anything outside of his office work, or if he did 
he never gave the public the benefit of the details of his investi- 



MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 211 

gations. Jolm Lawrence commenced work on horse history long 
before Mr. Weatherby commenced as a compiler of pedigrees, and 
he was altogether the ablest writer of his day, or perhaps we 
might add, of any other day. He was a clear and independent 
thinker and a vigorous writer. In his "History of the Horse in 
all His Varieties and Uses," on page 281, he thus discusses the 
question of Sampson's pedigree: 

" Nobody yet ever did, or ever could assert positively that Jiirg was not 
tborougbbred, but tbe case is very different witb respect to Sampson; since 
nobody in tbe sporting world, eitber of past or present days, ever supposed 
Mm so. Nor was tbe said world at all surprised at Robinson's people furnisb- 
ing tbeir stallion witb a good and true pedigree, a tbing so uiucb to tbeir ad- 
vantage. Having seen a number of Sampson's immediate get, tbose in tbe 
Lord Marquis of Rockingbam's stud and otbers, and all of them, Bay Malton 
perbaps less than any otber, in tbeir heads, size and form, baving tbe appear- 
ance of being a degree or two deficient in racing blood, I was convinced that 
tbe tben universal opinion on that point was well grounded. I was (in 1778) 
an enthusiast, collecting materials for a book on tbe borse. It bappened tbat 
I wanted a trusty and steady man for a particular service, and opportunely for 
tbe matter now under discussion, a Yorksbire man about tbreescore years of 
age was recommended to me, wbo had recently been employed in certain stables. 
I soon found tbat bis early life bad been spent in tbe running stables of tbe 
North, and tbat be bad known Sampson, whence be was alwaj's afterward 
named by us 'Old Sampson.' He was very intelligent on tbe subject of racing 
•t )ck and bis report was as follows. He took the mare to Blaze, for tbe cover 
^^!lif•b produced Sampson, helped to bit and break tbe colt, rode bim in exer- 
■ ise and afterward took him to Malton for bis first start, where, before tbe race, 
iie was ridiculed for bringing a great coach borse to contend against racers. 
On tbe sale of Sampson this man left tbe service of James Preston, E.sq., and 
went witb the colt into tbat of Mr. Robinson. His account of Sampson's dam was 
that she appeared about three parts bred, a bunting figure and by report a 
daughter of Hip, wbicb, however, could not be authenticated; and tbe fact 
was tben notorious and not disputed in tbe Yorksbire stables. . . . Mr. 
Tattersall lately slowed me a portrait of Sampson in bis flesb, in wbicb this 
defect of blood appears far more obvious tban in one wbicb I bad of bim 
galloping." 

Again, in his great quarto work, issued 1809, Mr. Lawrence 
reiterates his belief that Sampson was not thoroughbred. He 
says: 

"I am by no means disposed to retract my opinion concerning Robinson's 
Sampson. Not only did tbe account of tbe groom appear to me to be entitled 
to credit, but tbe internal evidence of tbe horse's baving bad in bim a cross of 
common blood is sufficiently strong by tbe appearance botb of tbe borse him- 
self and of bis stock; an idea in wbicb every sportsman, I believe, wbo re- 
members Engineer, Mambrino and otbers will agree witb me." 



2VZ 



THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 



Here then, we have the answer to the whole inquiry reduced 
to its simplest form. The groom who coupled the mare with 
Blaze from which came Sampson says the mare was called a Hip 
mare, but that her pedigree was really unknown. For the intel- 
ligence and honesty of this groom Mr. Lawrence does not hesi- 
tate to vouch, and he adds the common belief of all the York- 
shire sportsmen of that day, who knew the mare, that she was of 
unknown breeding. This, evidence is further supplemented by 
the family characteristics of the stock descended from Sampson, 
to say nothing of the great lack of "blood" in tiie appearance of 
Sampson himself. As against this we have the dry, unsupported 
assertion of Mr. Weatherby, forty years after the event, and prob- 
ably copied from an advertisement of the horse. In view of all 
this we must tabulate the pedigree of Sampson as follows: 



Sampson. 
(1745). 



f Blaze. 



Called a Hip Mare 
^ (Unknown), 



^„ .,j ( Darby Arabian. 

^^^^'^^'■^ ] Bett/ Leeds. 

n c A t TT'Mi i Grey Grantham. 
Confederate Filly -j j^ -^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ 



Engineer, son of Sampson, was a brown horse, foaled 1755, and 
was out of Miner's dam, by Young Greyhound; grandam by Our- 
wen's Bay Barb, and the next dam unknoAvn. This is all the 
pedigree that has ever been even claimed for this horse, and it 
falls far short of the rank of thoroughbred. That the eye may 
take it all in at a glance we will here put it into tabular form. 
There is a discrepancy of one year between AVeatherby and Pick 
in the age of the horse, and we find Pick is right in giving his 
date as 1755. 



Engineer. . , 
(1755). 



' Sampson. 



Miner's dam. 



i 



Blaze . 



( Cbilders. 

} Confederate Filly. 



Unknown. 

^r /-I 1 J I Greyhound. 

Young Greyhound, -j p^tmare. 

j 

/ Unknown. 



D. of Bav Barb 



Notwithstanding the absence of Eastern blood. Engineer was a 
race horse of above average ability, although not so good as an- 
other son of Sampson called Bay Malton. A few of his sons 
aside from Mambrino ran respectably, and his daughters were, at 
one time, highly prized as brood mares. 



MESSENGER AXD HIS AXCESTORS. 213 

MAMBRiifO, the son of Engineer, was a great strong-boned grey 
horse, bred by John Atkinson near Leeds in Yorkshire, and was 
foaled 1768. His dam was by Cade, son of the Godolphin 
Arabian; g. d. by Bolton Little John; g. g. d. Favorite by a 
son of Bald Galloway, etc. The Cade mare produced Dulcine, a 
a noted performer, and the mare Favorite was a distinguished 
performer herself. The poverty of this pedigree is all on the 
side of the sire, as will be seen by a brief tabulation. 

So ( Blaze. 

^ / unknown. 

Miner's dam. Uou^^B^'lT'- 

, , , . , ^ D. of Bay Barb. 

(iTeS).' ( Cade \ ^"d^^P^"'^ ^"--bian 

Daughter of. ■] 



Daughterof -j ^__^ ^ i Bolron Little John. 

Favorite. 



It is worthy of note here, as a curious fact, that Mambrino had 
two pacing crosses. RoxaT)a, the dam of Cade, was by Bald Gal- 
loway and Favorite was by a son of Bald Galloway. This horse 
Bald Galloway was a distinguished representative of the famous 
old tribe of pacers known as the "Galloways," from the province 
of Galloway in Southwestern Scotland. 

Mambrino was not put upon the turf till he was five years old, 
and he proved himself a great race horse in the best company 
and for the largest class of stakes. He was on the turf most of 
the time for five or six years and until he was beaten by Wood- 
pecker in 1779, in which race he broke down. He was beaten, 
but four times, and paid four forfeits. He went into the stud in 
the spring of 1777, although he ran after that, at lOgs. 10s. 6d. 
to cover thirty mares besides those of his owners. In 1779 he 
was again in the stud, in Cambridgeshire as before, at the same 
price; 1781 he covered at 50gs. 10. 6d.; 1784 at 15gs. 10. 6d.; 
1785 at 2ogs. 10s. 6d.; 1786 he dropped back to logs. 10s. 6d. 

We give these prices to show the variations in the estimated 
value of his services. As a sire of race horses Mambrino was not 
successful. Some fifteen or twenty of his progeny ran more or 
less respectably, but none of them was at all comparable with 
himself. While he was a comparative failure as a racing sire 
there was another qualification in Avhich he attained great emi- 
nence and distinction. In the second volume of Pick's Turf Reg- 
ister, published 1805, on page 266, we find the following para- 
graph appended to the history there given of this horse: 



^14 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

" Mambrino was likewise sire of a great many excellent hunters and strong, 
useful road horses. And it has been said that from his blood the breed of 
horses for the coach was brought nearly to perfection." 

This paragraph, considering its date (1805), the authority 
from which it comes, and the peculiar circumstances which 
prompted its utterance, has a most striking significance. After 
years of familiarity with Mr. Pick's works we can say freely that 
we never have been able to find any allusion or reference to the 
qualities of any horse portrayed by him other than his running 
qualities. This reference to the adaptabilities of the progeny of 
Mambrino stands alone. The "blood that brought the breed of 
coach horses nearly to perfection" must have been blood that 
gave the "breed" a long, slinging, road-devouring trot, as well 
as size and strength. The very same qualifications were observed 
and noted in the descendants of Mambrino in this country forty 
and fifty years ago, and at no time in our history have we had 
such unapproachable coach horses as the great-grandsons of 
Mambrino. What has been said, therefore, by Mr. Pick of the 
"coach-horse" qualities of the descendants of Mambrino in Eng- 
land has been fully realized and verified in his descendants, 
through Messenger, in this country. 

The question here arises whether Mambrino ever showed any 
remarkable trotting action himself that would seem to justify 
this estimate of the trotting action of his descendants? Several 
writers, and among them Mr. Lawrence, have spoken of this 
peculiarity of Mambrino's incidentally, but the most tangible 
account we have of it is furnished by an English writer to the 
Sporting Magazixe, who dates his letter from the "Subscrip- 
tion Rooms, Tattersall's, 1814." These "subscription rooms" 
were the very focus of sporting events, and this writer seems to 
be uilusually intelligent on this class of subjects. The object 
and point of his communication is to prove that no thoroughbred 
hor.e could be developed into a fast trotter. "Hence," he says, 
*'no thoroughbred was ever known capable of trotting sixteen 
miles within the hour, and only one stands on record as having 
trotted fifteen miles within one hour. That was Infidel, by 
Turk, who performed it in the North, carrying nine or ten stone. 
Several race horses have been supposed capable of trotting four- 
teen miles in one hour, and it is reported that the late Lord 
Grosvenor once offered to match Mambrino to do it for a thou- 
sand guineas." Now this writer does not say that Lord Gros- 



MESSENGER AND HIS AXCESTORS. 215 

Tenor really made such an offer, but only that he was "reported" 
to have made it. This does not prove that the offer was formally 
made, but it does prove that Mambrino had a very remarkable 
trotting step or such a topic would not have been considered at 
Tattersall's subscription rooms. As this writer seems to refer to 
Mambrino and Infidel only as exceptional horses for their trot- 
ting step among thoroughbreds, we may take it for granted that 
Mambrino was considered exceptional, in his day. It is not 
probable that he was ever trained an hour at the trot, and we 
must conclude, therefore, that whatever speed he showed was his 
natural and undeveloped gait. It will be observed that Mr. 
Pick's paragraph Avas dated 1805, and the letter from the "sub- 
scription rooms" 1814, so that they could not have been mere re- 
flections of theories advanced on this side of the Atlantic in rela- 
tion to Messenger being a great source of trotting speed. These 
two facts were on record long before any "Messenger theories" 
were in existence, and those "theories" were formulated long be- 
fore these two facts were known. The conclusions reached on 
both sides of the water are entirely harmonious, but they were 
reached in complete independence of each other. 

Messenger, son of Mambrino, was a grey horse about fifteen 
hands two inches high, with strong, heavy bone and a generally 
coarse appearance for a horse represented to be thoroughbred. 
From the Eacing Calendar, and not from the Stud Book, we learn 
that he was foaled 1780, and came out of a mare represented to 
be by Turf, and she out of a mare by Eegulus, son of Godolphin 
Arabian, etc., as represented by Mr. Weatherby in his Stud 
Book. By looking back to the beginning of this chapter the 
form in which the entry appears in the Stud Book will be fully 
comprehended. , The identity, history, and breeding of the dam 
of Messenger is the central point in this inquiry, and we must do 
our work carefully and thoroughly. From the form of the entry 
in the Stud Book, it will be understood that the breeder of each 
animal is supposed to appear opposite the foals of his own breed- 
ing, but this we have found in more than a thousand instances 
to be wholly imaginary on the part of the compiler. If the 
animal ran, the name of the party running him is far more apt 
to appear than the name of the breeder. It will be observed, 
also, that the Turf fillies of 1773 and 1774 appear without their 
color being known. These fillies seem to be put in there to par- 
tially fill the gap between 1771 and 1777. Mr. Pick says the dam 



316 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

of Messenger was black, but he gives no account of her further 
than that. Whether Mr. Pick was indebted to Mr. Weatherby, 
or Weatherby to Pick, 1 cannot say, but they both give the 
pedigree just as we have given it in this country. I am not 
inquiring whether these authorities agree on this pedigree, but 
whether they knew anything about it, and whether there is such 
agreement in details between them as will support each other. 

The first question that arises in every man's mind is, whether 
there is any further trace of this Turf mare, the reputed dam of 
Messenger, in the Stud Book, by Avhom was she bred and owned, 
and by whom was Messenger bred? Pick says the Turf mare wa& 
bred by Lord Bolingbroke, and Weatherby says she was bred by 
Lord Grosvenor. To test the question whether either is right, 
I have gone through the English Stud Book, page by page, and 
pedigree by pedigree, wherever I found the name of Lord 
Bolingbroke, or Lord Grosvenor, to see if any trace of the Turf 
mare could be found. I found no shadow of trace. The 
certificate of pedigree that came across the ocean with Messenger 
represents him to have been bred by John Pratt, and Mr. Pick, 
or rather his successor, Mr. Johnson, says he was bred and owned 
by Mr. Bullock. These clear and explicit declarations gave 
new hopes of finding sometliing of the Turf mare, and at it I 
went again, and searched every pedigree that had the name of 
Mr. Pratt or Mr. Bullock attached to it, with no better resulta 
than before. Now, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Grosvenor, Mr. 
Pratt and Mr. Bullock were all breeders, and if any of them 
ever owned the dam of Messenger and bred from her, none of 
her produce was ever recorded or ever started in a race. 

Thus, the more we search for the truth about Messenger and 
his origin, the more dense becomes the mystery. When we find 
an English authority that seems clear, we find another that con- 
tradicts him, and probably neither of them knows anything 
about it beyond uncertain tradition; AVhen we consider these 
contradictions of authoi'ities in connection with the fact that 
men were just as prone to lie and fix up a bogus pedigree a hun- 
dred years ago as they are to-day, and that stud-book makers 
were just as liable to be deceived then as now, we must conclude 
that there is room for very serious doubts as to whether 
Weatherby or Pick knew anything about the pedigree of Mes- 
senger, or by Avhom he was bred. 

In pushing our inquiries still further in search of this mare. 



MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 217 

we must consider somewhat in detail Mr, Weatherby's methods 
and the degree of responsibility he assumed for the accuracy of his 
compilations. In 1791 he published what he called '"An Intro- 
duction to a General Stud Book," containing, as he says, "a small 
collection of pedigrees which he had extracted from racing cal- 
endars and sale papers, and arranged on a new plan." In May, 
1800, he issued a supplement to his "Inti-oduction" bringing 
-down the produce of mares to 1799. In 1803 he issued what we 
:suppose is the first edition of the first volume of Ine Stud Book. 
The title-page reads, "The General Stud Book, containing pedi- 
grees of race horses, etc., from the Restoration to the present 
time." The imprint is, "Printed for James Weatherby, 7 
Oxenden Street, etc., London, 1803." The volume contains 
three hundred and eighty-four pages, while the edition of 1827 
contains four hundred and forty-eight pages. There is no 
"Volume I." on the title-page, nor is there any indication that 
this is a continuation or revision of any preceding work. It 
brings down the list of produce in many cases to and including 
1803, but none later than that year, so there can be no mistake 
.as to when it was issued. 

I have been thus particular in identifying this first edition 
■of the first volume of .the English Stud Book, for it gives us an 
insight into the methods employed by Mr. Weatherby in the prog- 
ress of his work. Upon a careful comparison of the editions of 
1803 with 1827 extending through the letters A, B, and M, we 
find that he has thrown out more than ten per cent, of the entire 
families in the edition of 1803. By "entire families" I mean 
brood mares, with their lists of jDroduce. In making these ex- 
clusions he seems to have confined himself to what may be con- 
sidered the historic period, at that day, and did not go back 
further than about twenty years. Beyond that period everything 
was traditional, and he appears to have shrunk from all responsi- 
bility of attempting the exclusion of families. On and near the 
border line between these periods he seems to have taken the re- 
sponsibility of cutting off a great many individuals of doubtful 
identity, even though the family was left to stand on its uncer- 
tain basis of tradition. I cannot say positively that the dam 
of Messenger and her sister were cut oft* with the multitude of 
others, but I can say that neither of them ever appeared again 
in the Stud Book. Other members of the family of the Eegulus 
mare have places for their descendants in subsequent volumes. 



218 THE HOESE OF A.MEK1CA. 

from which I would infer that Mr. Weatherby considered her 
breeding all right, but the two fillies, one of them the dam of 
Messenger, have been treated as spurious and wholly omitted 
from the records. These are the facts relating to these two 
fillies claimed originally to be by Turf, and there can be no moral 
doubt that they were omitted or excluded because Mr. Weatherby 
deemed them unsustained and probably spurious. 

In confirmation of the facts and circumstances already adduced, 
going to show that Messenger was not thoroughbred, we are now 
ready to consider one of the strongest arguments that can be 
advanced in support of that conclusion. This argument is. 
founded on the laws of nature and is not dependent upon the 
mere writing down of uncertain traditions. Messenger pos- 
sessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse has 
ever transmitted, from the period when the breed of race horses 
was formed to the present day. It is practically conceded on all 
hands that Messenger, by his own power and by his own right, 
founded a family of trotting horses, and this fact will be fully 
demonstrated in coming chapters. It is equally plain and, with 
honest and intelligent people, it is accepted with equal readiness, 
that no thoroughbred horse has ever done this. This declara- 
tion has been much controverted, but always in a general way 
and without specifying any particular thoroughbred horse that 
had succeeded in establishing a family of trotters. In the prog- 
ress of a discussion of this point with the late Charles J. Foster, 
a very clear and able writer, he was directly challenged, in a- 
manner that could not be dodged, to name the thoroughbred 
horse outside of Messenger, that had accomplished this feat. 
Greatly to my surprise, and I might say, gratification, he came^ 
back at me with two of Messenger' s sons — Hambletonian and 
Mambrino. Thus he conceded the whole contention, for out of, 
literally, thousands he had to come back to two sons of Messenger. 

In reply to an article in Wallace's Monthly for December, 1887, 
going to show that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, Mr. 
Joseph Cairn Simpson, of California, an able man and a lifelong 
advocate of more running blood in the trotter, wrote a review of 
the article in question. After admitting the full force of the 
demonstration that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, 
there is one sentence to which Mr. Simpson cannot subscribe, 
and he quotes it as follows: "Complete and conclusive as these 
facts may be. there is still another fact equally complete and 



MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS. 219 

still more convincing. Messenger possessed and transmitted 
qualities that no throughbred horse, in the experience of man, 
ever possessed and transmitted." This was a declaration of Messen- 
ger as a progenitor against the whole world of thoroughbreds, 
and Mr. Simpson felt that he could not let it pass unchallenged, 
and after scratching about among the thousands of thorough- 
breds without finding anything, like poor Mr. Foster, he 
"acknowledges the corn," and comes back with Mambrino, the 
son of Messenger, without, seemingly, once realizing that he was 
proving my contention. 

The theory that if any other English race horse had been in 
Messenger's place and bred upon the same mares and had his 
progeny developed as Messenger's were develoj)ed, he would have 
produced the same results, has always been very popular with 
the advocates of "more running blood in the trotter." No 
doubt there are still some honest, but not well-informed people, 
who hold to this view merely because they have never heard of 
any other imported English horses that were contemporaneous 
with Messenger, and hence have concluded there were none. If 
Messenger had been all alone during the twenty years of his stud 
services, as this theory assumes, there might be some reason to 
doubt whether some other English race horses might not have 
done just as well in establishing a line or tribe of trotters. But 
was he alone? From the close of the Eevolutionary War to the 
end of the last century was a period of great activity and enter- 
prise in the way of importing running horses from Great Britain. 
The blood of Herod and English Eclipse Avas in the highest esti- 
mate, not only in the old but in the new world, and a great many 
distinguished horses were brought over possessing those favorite 
strains. During that period racing was carried on with just as 
much spirit and eclat on Long Island and the river counties of 
New York, New Jersey, and some of the eastern counties of 
Pennsylvania as it was in Virginia and South Carolina. Horses 
of the most fashionable lineage were sought after and patronized, 
not by a few great breeding establishments, but by the farmers 
generally, in all the region here designated. The following list 
of imported English race horses is made up of animals that were 
contemporaneous Avith Messenger, covering the same mares and 
the offspring subjected to precisely the same treatment and con- 
ditions. The list is limited to what may be called the trotting 
latitudes, and embraces such animals only as were brought intO' 



:220 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

^ew Jersey, New York and Eastern Pennsylvania. We will not 
only give their names, but the blood elements also, so that all 
oan see that Messenger not only had competitors but competitors 
of the highest grade of running blood. 

Admiral, by Florizel, son of King Herod. 

Ancient Pistol, hy Ancient Pistol, son of Snap. 

Arrakoolcer, by Drone, son of King Herod. 

Baronet, by Vertumnus, son of Eclipse. 

Benjamin, by Ruler, son of Young Marske, 

Creeper, by Tandem, son of Dainty Davy. 

Deserter, by Lenox, son of Delpini, by Highflyer. 

Dey <if Algiers, Araljian. 

Dionied (Tate's), by Phenomenon, son of King Herod. 

Driver, by Saltram, son of Eclipse. 

Drone, by King Herod. 

Dungannon (Young), by Dungannon. 

Expedition, l>y Pegasus, son of Eclipse. 

Express, by Postmaster, son of King Herod. 

Exton, by Highflyer, son of King Herod. 

Florizel, by Florizel, son of King Herod. 

Grand Seignor, Arabian. 

Highflyer (1782), by Highflyer. 

Highflyer (1792), by Highflyer. 

Highlander (Brown), by Paymaster. 

Highlander (Gray), by Bordeaux. 

Honest John, by Sir Peter Teazle. 

Joseph, by Ormond, son of King Fergus. 

King William, by King Herod. 

King William, by Paymaster. 

Light Infantry, by Eclipse. 

Magnetic Needle, by Magnet. 

Magnum Bonum, by Matchem. 

Niuirod, by King Fergus. 

North Star, by North Star, son of Matcbem. 

Paymaster, by Paymaster. 

Prince Frederick, by Fortunio. 

Punch, by King Herod. 

Revenge, by Achilles. 

Rodney, by Paymaster. 

Royal George, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse. 

Roy <i list, by Saltram. 

Slender, by King Herod. 

Sour Crout, by Highflyer. 

Venetian, by Doge. 

Yorkshire, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse. 

Here we have forty-one imported English stallions, contem- 



MESSENGER AXD HIS ANCESTORS. 221 

poraneous with Messenger, occupying the same territory and 
covering the same mares that he covered. With the exceptions 
of two or three they were all ranked as not only thoroughbred, 
but they possessed the most fashionable and successful -blood 
that England had then produced. A few of them were taken 
southward after a time, but the great body of them lived out 
their days here. 

To this great array of imported English running horses we 
might add hundreds of their sons, and yet not find one that claimed 
to be thoroughbred that ever became a trotting progenitor or 
founded a family of trotters. Mr. Foster and Mr. Simpson, by far 
the two ablest writers on the wrong side of the question that this 
country has produced, with this list of forty English stallions 
before them from which to select their proof that Messenger was 
not the only progenitor of trotters, were at last compelled to 
take two of Messengers sons, as trotting progenitors, to prove 
that their sire was not a trotting progenitor. If the intellectual 
powers of these two gentlemen had enabled them to scratch ever 
so little beneath the glittering surface of the word '"thorough- 
bred," they would have saved themselves from this humiliating 
exhibition of absurdity. 

What was true of ^ Messenger's contemporaries is equally true 
of all the strictly thoroughbred stallions that have lived on the 
earth from his day to the present. No one of them has ever 
founded a trotting family and no one of them has ever got a trotter 
out of a mare of his own kind. Out of the half-dozen instances 
on record where a thoroughbred horse has got a trotter there is 
no one instance in which the dam did not have a strong pacing 
or trotting inheritance. If we accept the known and recorded 
experiences of the past seventy years, in the trotting world, we 
find two great facts on every page of the record. First, Mes- 
senger left a family of trotters; second, no other thoroughbred 
horse did that. It follows, then, that if Messenger transmitted 
capacities different from those transmitted by thoroughbred 
horses, he must have had a different inheritance from thorough- 
bred horses, and if different, then that inheritance could not have 
been thoroughbred. From the facts we have developed in the 
history of his English ancestors ; from the ten thousand demonstra- 
tions of his American descendants, and from the great laws 
which govern the transmission of special capacities, Ave are forced, 
to the conclusion that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 

Messenger's racing in England — His breeder unknown — Popular uncertainty 
about the circumstances and date of liis importation — The matter settled 
by bis first advertisement — Uncertainty as to liis importer — Description of 
Messenger by David \V. Jones, of Long Island — Careful consensus of de- 
scriptions by many wbo bad seen Messenger — His great and lasting popu- 
larity as a stock borse — Places and prices of bis services for twenty years 
— Death and burial. 

Messenger made his first appearance on the turf in October, 
1783, then three years old, and ran twice, successfully, that year. 
He continued on the turf till November, 1785, winning eight 
races, losing six and receiving forfeits in two. Most of his races 
were practically matches, and all were single dashes but one, in 
which he was beaten. Two of his winnings were less than a 
mile, five at the distance of a mile and a quarter, and one at two 
miles. These distances are approximate. He was beaten at two 
and a quarter miles, three, and three and a half miles. He 
never appeared in any great racing event, but seemed to be 
managed with a special view to picking up small prizes at short 
distances. His owner and manager, Mr. Bullock, was a very 
shrewd "professional" at Newmarket, he had quite a number of 
horses in the same stable with Messenger and some of them seem 
to have been selected always to run for the more valuable prizes. 
Considering the short distances he was able to run and the unim- 
portant character of the contests in which he was engaged, we 
must conclude that Messenger was a very ordinary race horse. 

It is not known by whom Messenger was bred. In his first 
advertisement in this country it is stated that he was bred by 
John Pratt, of Newmarket, but in the fourth volume of Pick's 
■'Turf Register," continued by Johnson, it is stated explicitly that 
he "was bred by and the property of Mr. Bullock, of Newmarket." 
Mr. John Pratt was a breeder as well as a racing man of some 
prominence, in his day, and the certificate of pedigree from him 
rud purporting to have been issued by him was probably a fraud. 



HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 223 

as he died May 8, 1785. This was while Messenger was still on 
the turf, and owned and controlled by Mr. Bullock for two years 
previous to this, still no mention is made of the fact, and Mr. 
Pratt is made to say that he sold him to the Prince of Wales, 
while all the evidence, which must necessarily be of a negative 
character, goes to show that the Prince of "Wales never owned 
him. Mr. Pratt Avas a Yorkshire man, of Askrigg, in the North 
Riding, and although he died at Newmarket we have no trace 
of any of the family from which the dam of Messenger was said 
to have descended ever being in his possession. Besides this, it 
is not likely that the importer of Messenger got a certificate from 
him two years after his death. 

The different rej)resentations that have been made about Mes- 
senger's importation would fill a much larger space than would 
be profitable. About no horse has there been so much written, 
and about no horse has there been so little really known. His 
character and memory have never suffered defamation, for every 
writer was a eulogist of the most enthusiastic type, whether he 
knew anything of his hero or not. As a specimen of the admira- 
tion which he excited, it has been told a hundred times that 
Avhen the horse came cavorting down the gangplank from the 
ship, with a groom hanging on to each side of his head, literally 
carrying them for some distance before he could be checked, an 
enthusiastic horseman shouted out, ''There, in that horse a mil- 
lion dollars strikes American soil." This story has been told so 
often, even in England, that no doubt many people believe the 
startling prophecy was really uttered. Indeed we have heard the 
name of the prophet, but as he Avas a distinguished New Yorker 
and as debarkation took place at Philadelphia, we never have 
been able to fully reconcile the actor with the occasion. The 
reputed prophecy, like the reputed pedigree, seems to have been 
an afterthought, but unlike the pedigree it proved true, whether 
uttered or not. Some said he was imported 1785, while others 
dribbled along through the intermediate years till 1800 was fixed 
upon with great positiveness as the precise year. One of these 
gentlemen, we remember very well, was entirely confident he 
returned to England and was brought back again after a number 
of years. Less than tAventy years ago the breeding world Avas 
favored with scores upon scores of this kind of teachers, not one 
of whom knew AA^hat he was talking about. The most surprising 
example of this kind of writing, hoAvever, is furnished by Mr. 0. 



224: THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

AV. Van Eanst, himself, who was part owner of the horse a num- 
ber of years. In a communication published in Skinner's "Turf 
Register," 1831, he says Messenger was imported into New York 
in 1792, and in the same publication for 1834 he says he was im- 
ported into New York 1791. As the sequel will show, Mr. Van 
Eanst, although his owner, had no definite knowledge of the 
early history of the horse. 

From some slight investigations I became satisfied, years be- 
fore, that Messenger made his first appearance in this country at 
Philadelphia, and that he was imported into that city instead of 
New York. In that view all the writers of the whole country 
were opposed to me; but, as it became more and more evident 
that those writers were merely copying from one another and 
that none of them had ever made an honest search for the truth, 
I resolved to follow my own convictions and to commence 
there an investigation that would settle the matter one way or 
the other. In a few hours after reaching that city I found a 
file of the old Pennsylvania Packet, and in the number dated May 
27, 1788, an advertisement of which the following is a true copy: 

Just Imported 

The capital, strong, full blooded, English stallion, 

MESSENGER. 

To cover mares this season at Alexander Clay's, at the sign of the Black 
Horse, i.j Market Street, Philadelphia, at the very low price of three guineas 
each mare, and one dollar to the groom. 

Messenger was bred by John Pratt, Esq., of Newmarket, who certifies the 
following pedigree. The grey horse Messenger was bred by me and sold to the 
Prince of Wales; he was got. by Mambrino (who covered at twenty-five guineas 
a leap). His dam by Turf, his grandam by Regulus; this Regulus mare was 
sister to Figerant and was the dam of Leviathan. John Pratt. 

The performance of Messenger has been so very great that there need only 
be a reference to the racing calendar of the years 1783, 1784 and 1785. 

Any mare missing this season shall be served the next gratis, provided: 
they continue the same properties, on paying the groom's fees. 

This is a literal copy of the first printed announcement of Mes- 
senger in this country, and there are two very striking features 
connected with it, namely, its bad grammar and the absence of 
the name of the importer and owner. The former we may 
attribute to the times, but to the latter I have been disposed to 
attach no trifling significance. It is a fact that till this day we 
have no direct information as to v;ho imported this horse. The' 
name "Benger" was developed indirectly as the man, but not; 



HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 225 

till years after the horse was dead, and probably the importer too, 
did I learn from an advertisement of a son of his that stood in 
Jersey that the importer's name was "Thomas Benger." In 1791 
and for two years afterward he was advertised to stand at "Mount 
Benger, two miles from Bristol, Pennsylvania." When I visited 
Bristol for the purpose of identifying "Mount Benger," which I 
supposed was the country seat of the owner of Messenger, I was 
greatly surprised to find that none of the "oldest inhabitants" 
had ever heard of such a place, .and when I was informed that 
there was no locality within half a dozen miles of Bristol where 
the ground rose to a hundred feet above the level of the DelaAvare 
River, the name "Mount Benger" assumed the character of an 
absurdity as well as a myth. From a very intelligent man of 
middle age, who had learned the blacksmith trade with his grand- 
father, I learned that he had often heard his grandfather speak of 
Messenger, and as having put the last set of shoes on him when 
he was taken away to New York the fall the yelloAV fever was so 
bad in Philadelphia. The tradition was still preserved in the 
family that Messenger reared up in crossing the river in a boat, 
and struck his groom on the head Avith one of those shoes, from 
the effects of which he died. As our informant Avas able to name 
two other horses. Governor and Babel, brought over by Mr. 
Benger, we were ready to accept his tradition that he lived at a 
point known in old times as "China Retreat," two miles beloAV 
Bristol on the Delaware. This point has been knoAvu later as 
"White Hall." 

After all traditions were exhausted, without yielding anything 
tangible or satisfactory, we turned with great confidence to the 
records of the county of Bucks, in which Mr. "Benger" had 
lived for a number of years. After a diligent and protracted 
search, embracing a number of years before and after his known 
residence in the county, we were not able to discover that any 
person by the name of "Benger" had ever owned a foot of real 
estate in the county or had been in any Avay publicly connected 
with its affairs or its administration. We had search made in 
Philadelphia with the same fruitless results. There is a faint 
tradition that Thomas Benger, if that Avas his name, Avas a fox- 
hunting Irish baronet, and if this was so, it is probable he re- 
turned to the old country about the time he sold Messenger in 
1793. However this may be, the owner is forgotten, but his 
horse will live forever. 



226 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Among the many eulogies and word-paintings of Messenger, 
by writers who knew the horse personally, we select the follow- 
ing from the pen of the late David W. Jones, of Long Island, as 
the most striking and picturesque. He says: 

" Having scanned in u y boyhood the magnificent form and bearing of this 
noble old horse, and for more than half a century having drawn reins over his 
descendants, I have for a length of time felt it incumbent to furnish such facts 
and impressions, as, when considered with those of others, will give the 
younger portion of the present generation, as well as posterity, a fair knowledge 
of the general characteristics of the noblest Roman of them all. The first time 
I ever saw old Messenger my father sent me to the farm of Townsend Cock, 
Esq., of the County of Queens, L. I., where the horse was then standing, to 
receive his services. On my arrival at his harem, I found the groom, whom 1 
knew, and he at once placed me with the mare a short distance from the stable, 
by the side of a barrier erected for security. Having at home heard frequent 
and long discussions in relation to the wonder I was now to behold, you may 
suppose I was all eyes. Presently the stalwart groom, James Lingham, with, 
at the extreme end of the bridle rein, all the blood of all the Howards, turned 
the angle of the stable and came in full view. The moment the old horse 
caught sight of the paragon of beauty I had brought to his embrace, he threw 
himself into an attitude, with the grandeur of which no other animal can com- 
pare, and at the same moment opened his mouth, and distending his nostrils, 
raised his exultant voice to such a pitch as gave unmistakable evidence of the 
capacity of his lungs and the size of his windpipe. Indeed, if his nostrils were 
as much larger than ordinary as my boyish vision pictured them, I can almost 
suppose that Mr. McMann with his little bay mare (Flora Temple), and sulky, 
could drive in at one, down the windpipe, turn under his immensely long 
arching loin and out at the other. ... At that early day I was only im- 
pressed by those extraordinary developments; but in after years as I sit behind 
his offspring, they invariably remind me of what was then to my youthful 
judgment less apparent — the extraordinary strength of his loin, the length 
and beautiful molding of the buttock, the faultless shape of the crupper 
bone, giving an elegant set to his fine flowing tail, as well as the remarkable 
swell of his stifle, altogether forming a most perfect and powerful hind 
quarter." * 

A good many years ago I made a special study of all that had 
been written about Messenger, and I was fortunate in being able 
to supplement this information by interviews with a few old 
gentlemen who knew the horse personally. Nearly all that 
generation of horsemen had passed away before I commenced this 
personal search for them. But a few then remained with excel- 
lent memories and with characters above suspicion or reproach. 
From these sources I gathered a great many incidents, facts and 
descriptions which I succeeded in harmonizing, to my own mind 



HISTORY OF MESSEXGEK. 227 

at least, and thus was able to compile a complete description of 
the horse at every point. That descrij)tion was written out more 
than twenty years ago, and in presenting it now I will not change 
a single word. At the time it was written, as will be seen from 
its perusal, I had really no doubt the horse was thoroughbred. It 
will not be charged, therefore, that the coarse traits brought out 
in the description were influenced in any degree by a theory of 
his breeding: 

"Messenger was a grey, that became lighter and flea-bitten 
with age. He was fifteen hands three inches high, and for a 
thoroughbred his appearance was coarse. He did not supply the 
mind with an idea of beauty, but he impressed upon it a concep- 
tion of solidity and power. His head was large and bony, with 
a nose that had a decided Roman tendency, though not to a 
marked degree. His nostrils were unusually large and flexible, 
and when distended they were enormous. His eye was large, 
full, very dark and remarkably brilliant. In this particular he 
does not appear to have inherited the weakness of his great-grand- 
sire, Sampson. His ear was larger than usual in the blood horse, 
but thin and tapering and always active and expressive. The 
windpipe was so unusually large and stood out so much as a dis- 
tinct feature that it marred what otherwise would have been a 
gamelike throat-latch and setting on of the head. His neck 
was very short for a blood horse, but was not coarse and thick 
like a bull's; neither did it rise into such an enormous crest as 
ihat of his sire. It was not a bad neck in any sense, but like 
Lexington's of our own day, it was too short to be handsome. 
His mane and foretop were thin and light. His withers were 
low and round, which appears to have been a family characteris- 
tic in the male line, back for three generations at least. His 
shoulders were heavy and altogether too upright for our ideas of 
a race horse. His barrel was perfection itself, both for depth 
and rotundity. His loin was well arched, broad and strong. 
His hips and quarters were 'incomparably superior to all others. * 
The column of the vertebra being of unusual depth and strength, 
^ave the setting on of the tail a distinctive, but elegant character. 
The tail was carried in fine style; like the mane, it was not in 
superabundant quantity, but there was no such scantiness as to 
detract from the beauty and grace of the animal. His stifles 
were well spread and swelling, but there appears to have been no 
unusual development at this point. From the stifle to the hock 



238 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and from the elbow to the knee, no writer that we can now recall 
has given us any description of either length or strength. We 
may, therefore, take it for granted that these points had no un- 
usual development of muscle, but were in harmony with the 
general contour and make-up of a great strong hors'e. His hocka 
and knees were anusually large and bony, with all the members 
strong and clearly defined. The cannon bones were short and 
flat and the ligaments back of them were very large and braced a 
good way off, so that the leg was broad and flat. Mr. Jones says 
this part of the limb was of medium size, but other writers all 
agree that he had an unusual amount of bone at this j)oint. 
Considering the whole style and character of the horse, and 
especially the character of his ancestors in the male line, and of 
Turf, the [reputed] sire of his dam, all of whom were distin- 
guished for their quantity of bone, we are disposed to think Mr. 
Jones' memory has not served him with entire accuracy in this 
particular. The conviction is reasonable and grows out of evi- 
dence that comes from every quarter, and we have no disposition 
to surrender it, that the bones of Messenger's limbs were un- 
usually large and strong for those of a thoroughbred. His 
pasterns and feet were all that could be desired, and as an evi- 
dence of the excellence and health of his underpinning several 
writers have put it on record that whether in the stable or on 
the show ground he never was known to mopingly rest one leg 
by standing on the other three, but was always prompt and 
upright. This is our conception of the form and appearance of 
the horse as we have reached it after a diligent and careful study of 
all that has been said by those who saw him while he lived. 
From this description it is a very easy matter to pick out the 
features which gave him his coarse and badly bred appearance. 
His big head, long ears, short neck, low withers, upright shoul- 
ders, large bones and, possibly, coarse hair, complete the catalogue. 
From these features the purity of his blood has been doubted 
and denounced, just as that of his sire, his grandsire and his 
great-grandsire had been denounced. The coarseness, the cart- 
horse appearance was in the family, but it did not seem to pre- 
vent some of them from beating some of the best that England pro- 
duced in successive generations. There are many traditions that 
have been handed down to us concerning his temper, some of 
which, no doubt, have accumulated and gathered strength and 
ferocity in the years through which they have rolled. There 



HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 2'Z9 

have been perhaps half a dozen stories about his killing his 
keepers, but we are not able to say whether any one of them is 
true. It is known with certainty, however, that he was willful 
and vicious and would tolerate no familiarity from strangers." 

The ownership of Messenger, after he was transferred from 
Philadelphia to New York, like his earlier history, seems to be 
very much muddled, Henry Astor, a New York butcher, cer- 
tainly bought him in the fall of 1793, and located him at Philip 
Piatt's, four miles from Jamaica, on Long Island. In the spring 
of 1796 Mr. Cornelius W. Van Ranst bought one-third interest 
in him and removed him to Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New 
York, and, without specifying the time, he says he afterward 
purchased the remaining two-thirds, for which he paid two thou- 
sand seven hundred and fifty dollars. There appears to have 
been some mistake about this, for in 1802 we find Henry Astor, of 
New York, conveying one-third interest in the horse to Benjamin 
B. Cooper, of Camden, New Jersey. Some other parties also 
claim to have owned an interest in the horse, and I heard that 
there was a lawsuit about him between Astor and Van Eanst. 
The latter claims to have owned an interest in him till the time 
of his death, in 1808. It is not known how much Mr. Astor paid 
for him when he bought him, nor have I any data from which to 
determine the probable market value of the horse except that 
Mr. Van Ranst says he paid two thousand seven hundred and 
fifty dollars for two-thirds of him. If we accept this as a basis, 
he must have been valued at about four thousand one hundred 
and twenty-five dollars. It is true, beyond doubt, that for several 
years he brought to his owners a net annual rental of one thousand 
dollars. This would indicate a very large patronage at very high 
prices for those times. For the twenty years of his stud services 
in this country, we find him located as follows: 

1788, at Alexander Clay's, Market Street, Philadelphia, at $15 
the season and II to the groom, privilege of returning. 

1789, at Thomas Clayton's, Lombard Street, Philadelphia, at 
$10 the season and $1 to the groom. 

1790, at Noah Hunt's, in the Jersies, near Pennington, at 18. 

1791, at "Mount Benger," two miles from Bristol, Bucks Co., 
Pa., at $16. 

1792, at the same place and the same price. 

1793, at the same place and the same price. 



230 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

1794, at Philip Piatt's, fifteen miles from New York and four 
from Jamaica, Long Island, at $25 the season. 

1795, at the same place and the same price, when, as Mr. Van 
Eanst expressed it, "he took with our horsemen." 

1796, at Pine Plains, Dutchess County, N. Y., whe'rehe covered 
106 mares at $30 the season. 

1797, I have no advertisement for this year, but it is probable 
he was at the same place at the same price. 

1798, at Pine Plains, as before, and the terms $30 for the season 
and $40 to insure. 

1799, I have no definite trace of him this year, but there are 
some indications he was in "West Jersey. 

1800, for the spring season he is not located, but he made a 
fall season at John Stevens' in Maidenhead, Hunterdon Co., N. J. 

1801, at Goshen, Orange Co., N. Y., and I have seen th& 
book account of expenses, etc., while he was there. 

1803, At Cooper's Ferry, opposite Philadelphia, Pa., but the 
price of services is not mentioned. 

Io03, at Townsend Cock's, near Oyster Bay, Long Island, at 
$20 the season. 

1804, at the same place and the same price. 

1805, at Bishop Underhill's, in Westchester Co., N. Y., fif- 
teen miles from Harlem Bridge. Price reduced to $15. 

1806, back again at Townsend Cock's, and the terms fixed at $15 
for the season, and $25 to insure. 

1807, again at Bishop Underhill's on the same terms as before, 
and this was the last of his twenty years' stud services. It will 
be observed that the horse is located every year except two, and 
these locations are determined, not by tradition or hearsay, but 
by copies of his advertisements for each year. In giving the 
prices charged for his services I have given the value of the 
guinea or the pound as five dollars. 

Messenger died January 28, 1808, in the stable of Townsend 
Cock, on Long Island, in his twenty-eighth year. This date has 
been as familiar to all intelligent horsemen for the last forty 
years as any prominent event in the history of the nation. The 
news of the death of the old patriarch spread with great rapidity, 
and soon the whole countryside was gathered to see the last of 
the king of horses and to assist at his burial. His grave was pre- 
pared at the foot of a chestnut-tree some distance in front of 
the house, and there he was deposited in his holiday clothing. 



HISTORY OF MESSENGER. 231 

In response to the consciousness that a hero was there laid away 
forever a military organization was extemporized, and volley 
after volley by platoons was fired over his grave. Some of the 
young men and boys who witnessed and participated in the cere- 
monies of the occasion were still living twenty years ago, and as 
they related the incidents of the occasion to me, their recollec- 
tions seemed to be as clear and bright as though the occurrence 
had been of yesterday. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

messenger' s sons . 

Hambletonian (Bishop's) pedigree not beyond doubt — Cadwallader R. Colden's 
review of it — Ran successfully — Taken to Granville, N. Y. — Some of bis 
descendants — Mambrino, large and coarse in appearance — Failure as a 
runner — Good natural trotter — His most famous sons were Abdallab, 
Almack and Mambrino Paymaster — Wintbrop or Maine Messenger and bis 
pedigree and bistory — Engineer and tbe tricks of bis owners — Certainly a 
son of Messenger — Commander — Bush Messenger, pedigree and description 
— Noted as tbe sire of coach horses and trotters — Potomac — Tippoo Saib — 
Sir Solomon — Ogden Messenger, dam thoroughbred — Mambrino (Grey) — 
Black Messenger — Whynot, Saratoga, Nestor, Delight — Mount Holly, 
Plato, Dover Messenger, Coriander, Fagdown, Bright Pbcebus, Slasher, 
Shaftsbury, Hotspur, Hutchinson Messenger and Cooper's Messenger — 
Abuse of the name " Messenger." 

It is not my purpose to write a history of all the descendants 
of Messenger, for that would fill several volumes and would be 
simply writing over again the trotting and pacing records of the 
past twenty years. I will, therefore, limit the chapters on this 
topic to such of his descendants as have demonstrated the value 
and prominence of their blood, as a factor, in the make-up of 
the American Trotter. Naturally, the immediate progeny of 
Messenger will first demand consideration, and then will follow 
the succeeding generations that have written their owi\ history 
in the official records of trotting and pacing. Completeness of 
description and space occupied will be determiitbd, chiefly, by 
the prominence and historic value of the animal under review. 
In this scope and without following any chronological order, I 
will try to embrace all that is known that would be of value to 
the student of trotting-horse history. 

Hambletonian (Bishop's), originally called Hamiltonian. — • 
This was a dark-bay horse about fifteen hands two inches high. 
He was bred by General Nathaniel Coles, of Dosoris, Long 
Island, and Avas foaled 1804. He was got by Messenger, his dam 
Pheasant (the Virginia Mare), said to be thoroughbred, by imp. 
Shark and grandam by imp. Medley. I first unearthed the pedigr^'^ 



messenger's sons. 233 

of this "Virginia Mare" in the advertisement of Hambletonian 
for 1814 when he was owned by Townsend Cock and standing 
that year at Goshen, New York. The "Old Turfman," Cadwal- 
lader R. Golden, was thoroughly familiar with all turf subjects in 
the early years of this century, and was the best turf writer of his 
generation. He had no patience or tolerance with frauds in 
pedigrees and always exposed them without mercy. He stoutly 
maintains that the pedigree of the "Virginia Mare" was bogus, 
and, to use his own language, he says: 

" When Hambletonian became a public stallion, his owners were in a dilem- 
ma; & pedigree was necessary, so to work they went, and, as many had done 
before and as many are doing now, made one; and in his handbills his dam was 
given as bred in Virginia, and got by imported Shark, with a train of maternal 
ancestors, with as much truth, and affording as much ability to trace it or 
discover the breeder of the dam, as though they had said hi, cockalorum jig." 

Mr. Golden goes into the pedigree of this mare and the non-racing 
character of her family at great length, and it cannot be denied 
that he has the whole argument. As a specimen of sharp and 
interesting turf writing of that period and from that pen, I must 
commend my readers to turn to this article, which will be found 
in Wallace's Monthly, Vol. II., p. 67. 

With the probabilities all against the truthfulness of the pedi- 
gree of the dam, as given, it is certainly true that he was a run- 
ning horse and attained distinction in his day. I have no full 
list of his performances at hand, but the following may be taken as 
a fair summary of his principal achievements. He ran at New- 
market in the spring of 1807 (then three years old), one mile, 
beating General Goles' colt Bright Phoebus, Mr. Terhune's bay 
filly, and distancing two others. He also ran, two days after the 
above race, four heats of a mile each, beating Bright Phcebus 
again and distancing three others. In the fall of 1808 he ran 
five weeks successively, and the three last weeks he won three 
four-mile purses, running the distance in shorter time than it 
ever had been run in the State of New York. I must say here that 
these races were run on the then Harlem course, which was not a 
full mile in length. 

While Hambletonian was on the turf, Tippoo Sultan, a grand- 
son of Messenger, beat Bond's First Gonsul in a famous four-mile 
race, and Mr. Bond determined that he would find a horse that 
would be able to lower Tippoo Sultan's colors, and it was thought 



234 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

there was nothing in the North able to do it except Miller's Dam- 
sel, so he made a match for four thousand dollars a side on con- 
dition that Damsel should prove not to be in foal. But the mare 
proving to be in foal the match was oflE. He then took Hamble- 
tonian into his stable and offered to- match him for- the same 
amount against Tippoo Sultan, but he went amiss and the match 
was off. This incident is here introduced to show that whatever 
his real merits, Hambletonian had some rei^utation as a running 
horse. It was said that the secret of Mr. Colden's hostility to 
the "Virginia Mare" and her descendants was because those 
descendants were always able to beat the descendants of his 
fashionably bred mare Matilda. Whatever the motive in expos- 
ing a pedigree that has n«ver been fully established, there is one 
particular and that the most important of all particulars, in 
which Mr. Golden has done justice to Hambletonian. He says: 
^^ Hambletonian got some excellent roadsters, good trotters.'^ 

There seems to be no description of this horse extant that is 
fully satisfactory. For some seasons he was in the hands of Mr. 
Daniel T. Cock, who in 1869 furnished me the following: "He 
was a dark bay, a little heavy about the head and neck, fifteen 
and a half hands high, and rather an upright shoulder. Back, 
loin and hind quarters as good as were ever put on a horse. Fore 
legs a little light, but hind legs strong and good — pretty straight. 
He was a beautiful saddle horse, notwithstanding his head and 
ear were a little coarse." Other persons who had seen him have 
described him as "a great strong horse, with bone and substance 
enough to pull the plow or do any other kind of drudgery." It 
has been said that he had a fine open trotting gait and that, in a 
cutter with old Isaac Bishop behind him, he was able to show the 
boys the road. 

In 1807 he became the property of Townsend Cock, of Long 
Island, and he remained on the turf till 1810, when he was put in 
the stud. That and the following season he was at the stable of 
his OAvner; 1812 at Cornwall; 1813 at Fishkill; 1814 at Goshen; 
1815-16 at Fishkill; 1817 at White Plains. In the winter of 
1819 Mr. Cock sold him to Stephen and Smith Germond of Dutch- 
ess County, l^ew York, and Isaac Bishop of Graiiville, New 
York. The latter was probably the real owner, and the horse 
then became known as "Bishop's Hambletonian." He made 
several seasons in the region of Granville and was back in Dutch- 
ess County 1823 and 1824. The next year he was at Granville — 



messenger's sons. 235 

1825. He made one season, at least, at Burlington, Vermont, 
and some seasons or parts of seasons at Poultney, Vermont. It 
is said be lived till 1834. 

At Wallingford, Vermont, he was bred upon the "Munson 
Mare," said to be a daughter of imported Messenger, and doubt- 
less either by him or one of his earlier sous, and the produce 
was Harris' Hambletonian, also known as ''The Remington 
Horse" and Bristol Grey, and this son became the progenitor of 
a great tribe of trotters, known as the "Vermont Hamble- 
tonians," some of which were very fast pacers, among them the 
famous Hero, the fastest of his generation. Another son of 
Mr. Bishop's horse was the Judson Hambletonian, that was the 
sire of the Audrus horse, that got thv3 famous Princess, that was 
pitted against Flora Temple. He was also bred on his half-sister, 
Silvertail, by Messenger, and produced One Eye, a very fast mare, 
the grandam of Rysdyk's Hambletonian, and I have always 
thought that this combination was the very cream of the pedi- 
gree of that great horse. He was also bred on a daughter of Mr. 
Coffin's son of Messenger and produced Whalebone, that was the 
phenomenal long-distance trotter of his generation. His son. Sir 
Peter, out of an unknown mare, was also a famous old-time trot- 
ter. One of his daughters was bred to Coriander, son of Mes- 
senger, and the produce was Topgallant, the fastest horse of his 
time. These individual enumerations might be extended in- 
definitely, but I have given enough to show that he was not 
merely a progenitor of trotting speed in remote generations, but 
that speed came directly from his own loins. Another most sig- 
nificant fact is here brought to light, namely, that when bred 
back upon the blood of his own sire he achieved his greatest suc- 
cesses. 

Mambrino. — This great son of Messenger was a bright bay 
with a star and one white ankle. He was fully sixteen hands 
high, with great length of body and generally of coarse appear- 
ance. He was foaled 1806, and was bred by Mr. Lewis Morris, of 
Westchester County, New York. His dam was by imported 
Sour Crout, out of a mare by imported Whirligig, and she out of 
the famous Miss Slammerkin, that is a well-known landmark 
reaching beyond the Revolution. The late William T. Porter, of 
the Spirit of the Times, stoutly maintained that Mambrino was 
not a thoroughbred horse, and his reasons seemed to rest wholly 
upon his coarse and cart-horse appearance. Technically, Mr. 



236 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Porter was right, but the trouble did not rest with the dam, as 
he seems to have supposed, for I have seen the original certificate 
of breeding in the handwriting of Mr. Morris, his breeder, and 
there is no slip on that side of the pedigree. Mr. Morris was a 
prominent breeder and racing man for many years and his char- 
acter was without taint. The pedigree is a very long one and I 
would be very far from vouching for the truth of the remote 
extensions, but back to the mare by Cub, imported by Mr. De 
Lancey, who bred Miss Slammerkin, there can be no mistake. 

In the spring of 1810, then four years old, he was purchased 
of his breeder by Major William Jones, of Queens County, Long 
Island, and in the autumn of that year he was trained and ran 
for the two-mile parse at the old Newmarket Course, Long 
Island, and it is said gave some evidence that he could run, but 
after that he was never trained nor started in a race, from which 
we may conclude he was not a race horse, or his owner, who bred 
and ran his horses, would have given him another trial. 

In 1811 he was put in the stud and made the season at Hunt- 
ington, Long Island, in charge of Ebenezer G-ould. It is not 
known where he made the season of 1813, but probably in Orange 
or Dutchess County. The years 1813-14-15 he was in charge of 
my late highly esteemed and venerable correspondent, David W. 
Jones, on the borders of Queens and Suffolk counties. Long 
Island, where he covered about two hundred and fifty mares. 
In 1816 he was in one of the river counties, in 1817 at Fishkill, 
and 1818 at Townsend Cock's, Long Island. In later years he 
changed hands many times, at from two hundred to two hundred 
and fifty dollars, and there is no published trace of him till we 
find that he made the seasons of 1825 and 1829 at Pleasant Valley, 
Dutchess County, and he died the property of Benjamin Grer- 
mond, on the farm of Azariah Arnold in Dutchess County, about 
1831. 

He took his beautiful color from his dam and transmitted it 
with great uniformity. His general structure was after the Mes- 
senger model, especially in the large bones and joints of his 
limbs. His head was long and bony and his ears were large and 
somewhat heavy. He was too high on his legs and his general 
appearance was coarse, all of which he transmitted. In speaking 
of his offspring Mr. Jones remarks: ''When young they were 
somewhat leggy and lathy, but spirited, stylish and slashing in 
action. When matured, he must indeed be fastidious who would 



messenger's sons. 237 

crave another." With regard to his gait Mr. Jones uses the 
following very emphatic language: "I have been the breeder of 
some, and the owner of many good horses, and with the best 
opportunities of judging, having ridden him (he was never driven) 
many, many miles, I say, with entire confidence, he was the best 
natural trotter I ever threw a leg over. His walk was free, fling- 
ing and elastic; his trot clear, square and distinct, with a beau- 
tiful roll of the knee and great reach of the hind leg." In the 
absence of actual training and timing, it is hardly possible to get 
better evidence that Mambrino was a natural trotter that might 
have been developed to a considerable rate of speed. It would 
be interesting to know just why the horse "never was driven." 
Did he show an unconquerable aversion to harness, and did 
Abdallah inherit this aversion? This description of Mambrino 's 
gait was written in 1866, and the writer had spent a long lifetime 
in an intimate personal knowledge of many, or indeed most, of 
the best early trotters that this country had produced. 

The only one of his immediate progeny that attained distinc- 
tion as a trotter was the famous Betsey Baker. This mare was 
very prominent among the best of her day, and was able, on one 
occasion at least, to beat the great Topgallant, and in tandem 
with Grey Harry when she was old she trotted in 3:41|-2:43|. 
Others of his progeny were trotters of some merit, but none of 
them especially distinguished on the turf. His three sons, Abdal- 
lah, Almack and Mambrino Paymaster, are the bright links in the 
chain extending from Messenger to the two-minute trotter that 
will keep his memory green as long as there is a trotting horse 
on the earth. Abdallah at the head of the Hambletonians, 
Almack at the head of the Champions, and Mambrino Paymaster 
at the head of the Mambrino Chiefs embrace the major portion 
of the great trotters of this generation. 

WiNTHROP, OR Maine Messenger. — Perhaps no son of Mes- 
senger, not excepting Hambletonian and Mambrino, produced a 
more marked effect upon the stock of any part of the country 
than this horse did in the State of Maine. The impress he there 
made was not only remarkable at the time, but it is still felt and 
acknowledged in his descendants to this day. There have been 
many conflicting statements made to the public about him and 
his history, but I think I am now able to give, in authentic and 
reliable form, all that is really known of his origin and history. 
He was foaled about 1807 and was among the last colts by the 



238 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

imported horse, but unfortunately we know nothing of the blood 
of his dam. Mr. Alvan Hay ward, for many years a citizen of 
Kennebec County, Maine, but more recently of York, Livingston 
County, New York, says his dam possessed some imported blood; 
but as all his records and memoranda were burned up in 1845 he 
is not able to give the pedigree of the mare that produced him. 

Mr. Hayward bought the horse about 1817 or 1818, in the 
village of Paris, Oneida County, New York, of a man by the 
name of Rice or Wright, but did not remember which. He 
took him to Winthrop, Maine, where he was first known as 
"Messenger," then as "Kennebec Messenger," or "Winthrop 
Messenger," and when he became old, as "Old Messenger." The 
earliest contemporaneous account I have of this horse is his 
advertisement for the season of 1819, which I copy from the 
Hallowell Gazette of May 12, of that year, and is as follows: 

" THE VALUABLE HORSE MESSENGER. 

" The subscriber hereby recommends to the public and all who feel interested 
to improve in the breed of good and serviceable horses, the good horse Mes- 
senger, tliat stock so well known and approved of on Long Island, New York, 
and Pennsylvania. Said horse was raised on Long Island, and owned by Mr. 
Rylander, a gentleman who has taken the greatest pains to import the best 
breed of horses that came to his knowledge. Said horse is a silver grey, well 
proportioned, of a large size, and a good traveler. Gentlemen who are desirous 
of raising good horses will do well to call and see for themselves. 

" The Messenger will stand for the most part of the time in the village at 
Withrop Mills. Alvan Hayward. 

'• Winthrop, May 1st, 1819." 

From the foregoing it will be seen that the new element 
brought out in the history of this horse is the statement that he 
was owned at one time by Mr. Rylander, of Long Island. There 
were two brothers of this name, and they imported a great many 
horses, but never before had I heard their names connected with 
Winthrop Messenger. This carries us back to a period in the 
history of the horse before he was taken to Oneida County. 

Colonel Stanley, a prominent banker of Augusta, and at one 
time a leading horseman and stage proprietor, bought Messenger 
of his kinsman, Hayward, and owned him some seven years. He 
says the horse was brought to Maine as early as 1816, and that 
his Uncle Hayward had certificates that he was got by imported 
Messenger, out of a mare well-bred and part of imported blood. 

In a communication from Mr. Sanford Howard, who had been 



messenger's sons. 239 

prominently connected with the breeding interests of the coun- 
try for many years, the following description is given: 

" I saw him several times, first in 1828. In the latter years of his life he 
stood mostly at Anson, on the Kennebec River, and I think died there about 
1831 [he died at Dixfieldj. He appeared like an old horse when I first saw 
him, older, perhaps, from being much afflicted with grease, which had become 
chronic, and at length had almost destroyed his hoofs; so that the last time I 
saw him he was nearly incapable of locomotion. His feet and legs looked like 
those of an elephant. This trouble was transmitted to his offspring through 
several generations (though not invariably so), and constituted, perhaps, in con- 
nection with, in many cases, a flat foot and low heels, their greatest defect. 

" Mr. Hayv/ard states, in concluding his letter, that he has no doubt the 
horse he took to Maine was got by imp. Messenger. The remark is probably 
elicited by intimations that he might have been gotten by a son of Messenger. 
I presume Mr. Hayward's belief was well founded. As imported Messenger 
did not die until the 28th of January, 1808, there is no discrepancy between 
that event and the age of Mr. H.'s horse. At the same time I must admit that 
Maine Messenger hardly looked like a half-blood horse. He was pretty large, 
rather short-legged, thick-set, with heavy mane and tail, very hairy legs, long 
hair on his jaws, and was heavy coated (in winter) all over his body. These 
characteristics were sometimes accounted for by saying he was probably out of 
a Dutcb mare, meaning such mares as the Dutch farmers of New York kept. 
I never heard of any claim being set up for his speed in trotting, and I pre- 
sume he was never tried at running. He was strong and plucky, and the story 
was told at Winthrop that on an occasion when all the stallions of tlie neighbor- 
hood were brought out to be shown, they were put to a trot in sleighs for half 
a mile or so, and Messenger was beaten. Whereupon his owner proposed that 
the horses should each draw a sled with six men on it up to Winthrop hill, 
and be timed. It was done, and Messenger beat them all. I think the first of 
his offspring that became noted for fast trotting was a gelding called Lion, 
taken to Boston by a well-known horse 'dealer by the name of Hodges, of 
Hallowell, Maine. He was sold, I think, for four hundred dollars, which 
made quite a sensation among the Kennebec farmers who had any stock of the 
same sort. I do not recollect the rate of speed this horse showed, but a mile 
in three minutes was then considered wonderful, and probably this was about 
his rate. Other horses of the stock were soon brought out as fast travelers. I 
remember a friend of mine showing me some young horses he was training, 
and I rode with him after several of them. They were vatural trotters, and 
would do nothing but trot, even under severe applications of the whip. But I 
think the second generation from Mr. Hayward's horse were generally faster 
trotters than the first. They were also generally handsomer horses, not so 
rough looking. Nearly all the horses of this stock which have acquired a 
reputation in Massachusetts, New York, etc. , as fast trotters, had not more 
than a quarter of the blood of the horse that jNIr. Hayward took to Maine, and 
consequently had not more than an eighth of the blood of imported Messenger. 

" The mares that produced these horses were of no particular blood. 
Various stallions had been kept in that section. Morgans from New Ham p- 



240 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

sliire and Vermont, witt an occasional change to the French Canadians, and 
now and then a quarter or half bred horse from New York or New Jersey." 

This excellent communication from Mr. Howard is especially 
valuable, as the conclusions drawn by an accurate and competent 
observer from a personal acquaintance with the original horse 
and his progeny. There are some inferences, however, that may 
be drawn from Mr. Howard's letter that would be unjust to this 
distinguished animal. His general coarse appearance, in con- 
nection with which Mr. H. says, "he hardly looked like a half 
bred horse," was a prominent feature in the family. Mambrino, 
a very high-bred son of old Messenger, was very coarse, and the 
same remark was often made about him. The quantity and 
length of his coat in the winter of his old age are not conclusive 
against his pretensions to a large share of good and pure blood. 
They are the results oftentimes of neglect and ill health. It is 
somewhere stated that the famous Sir Archy before he died 
looked exceedingly shaggy, his hair being fully three inches long. 
Mr. Howard expresses the opinion that "the second generation 
from Mr. Hay ward's horse were generally faster trotters than the 
first." In many instances this, no doubt, is true, for it would 
be altogether contrary to the uniform laws which govern these 
things if development and use did not strengthen and intensify 
the instinct to trot in successive generations. If Mr. Howard is 
right, and we do not doubt he is, the increased capacity did not 
grow out of the dilution of the blood, but out of the strengthen- 
ing of the instinct by culture and use. At the time Mr. Howard 
made this remark he evidently did not know that the famous 
old-time trotters, Daniel D. Tompkins and Fanny Pullen, were 
both immediately from the loins of AVinthrop Messenger. In 
their day these two were classed among the best and fastest trot- 
ters that the world had then produced. The facts that both 
these animals were the immediate progeny of "Winthrop Messen- 
ger were never brought to light for many years, and all I will say 
about them now is that they do not rest on shadowy traditions or 
suppositions, but are fully and circumstantially established. 

In a letter written by Mr. Hayward, May 12, 1852, in speaking 
of the useful and everyday qualities of this horse's progeny, 
he used the following language: 

" The stock produced by that horse I consider superior, as combining more 
properties useful in a horse than any other stock I have ever been acquainted 



messenger's soxs. 241 

-with, being good for draft, for carriage, for travel, for parade, or any place 
wliere liorses are required. They had great bottom and strength, and were of 
hardy constitution. There are some horses in this town twenty-two years old, 
that were by a son of Winthrop Messenger, which I brought with me when I 
left Maine. They have always been accustomed to draw the plow and to per- 
form other hard labor, and yet they have the appearance of young horses, and 
will now do more service than many horses of seven or eight years old." 

Among the several sons of imported Messenger whose names 
are conspicuous as the progenitors of great tribes of tlie most 
distinguished trotters I know of no one entitled to a higher 
place on the roll of fame, all things considered, than this one 
that went to Maine, and there laid a foundation that has made 
the State famous throughout the length and breadth of the land 
for the speed and stoutness of its trotting horses. 

With such noted performers from his own loins as Fanny 
Pullen and Daniel D. Tompkins, and in the next generation the 
famous Zachary Taylor, this horse made about the best showing 
■of all the sons of Messenger, but as his line failed to produce a 
Kysdyk's Hambletonian or a Mambrino Chief, it dropped to a 
place somewhat removed from the front of the procession. 

Engineer was a grey horse, about sixteen hands high and very 
elegant in his form, style and proportions. The earliest account 
we have of him is in the spring of 1816, when he was advertised 
in Tlie Long Island Star to stand at the stable of Daniel Seely, 
near Suffolk Court House, and at Jericho, in Queens County. 
He was in charge of Thomas Jackson, Jr., generally designated 
as "Long Tom." He was then well advanced in years, but no 
attempt was made to give his age. Mr. Daniel T. Cock, in 
charge of Duroc and one or two other stallions, was then in sharp 
competition with Engineer, and he assures me he was a horse of 
large size, great share of bone and sinew, most elegant form, and 
a fine mover. His elegant appearance was so captivating that he 
was a very troublesome competitor. 

The advertisement referred to contains the following very 
unsatisfactory paragraph relating to his pedigree, viz., "The 
manner he came into this country is such that I cannot give an 
account of his pedigree, but his courage and activity show the 
purity of his blood, which is much better than the empty sound 
of a long pedigree." This was a most unexpected discovery, for 
I had always understood that Engineer was a son of Messenger 
and never had heard of this mystery before. It is here intimated 



242 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

that the horse was imported, and the story that Jackson told was. 
that he was brought from England to Canada by a British officer,, 
and by some surreptitious means found his way from Canada to- 
Long Island. What appears to be the real history of the horse,, 
and the version accepted afterward by everybody on "the island, 
will be found in the following extract from a letter written by- 
David W. Jones, February 28, 1870. He says: 

" I can well account for Mr. Cock's recollections of the history of the first- 
Engineer. Thomas Jackson and George Tappan, noted owners and keepers of 
stallions on Long Island and in the counties of Orange and Dutchess, in the 
course of their peregrinations met with a person in possession of this horse, 
who offered him for sale. Impressed with his fine appearance and pedigree, 
they at once entered into negotiations for his purchase, and finally obtained 
him at so low a price as to cause strong suspicions that he was not honestly iu 
his vendor's possession. They, however, determined to take the chances, and 
at once brought him to Long Island, their place of residence, and determined 
on what they deemed a harmless representation in regard to his history; for 
this they had several motives. First, Messenger stallions were then very 
numerous on Long Island; their blood coursed in the veins of nearly every 
brood mare. Secondly, imported stallions were much desired, and by a little 
added fiction they could give him considerable eclat, and thirdly, in case of his 
having been unjustly obtained this would afford the best means of disguise. 
Accordingly they represented him as having been imported from England to 
Canada and ridden in the army by Gen. Brock, who, in an engagement with our 
troops, was shot and killed. The horse, escaping into our lines, was secured 
by our soldiers and brought to the State of New York. On these representa- 
tions they claimed to have purchased him. No pedigree, as I recollect, was 
attempted to be given, and though many doubted the truth of this statement, 
there was no evidence to controvert it. For a length of time this story was 
adhered to; but after several years, when all fears of difficulty had subsided, 
they acknowledged the deception. Mr. Tappan, who resided but a few miles 
from me, was a man of more than ordinary candor and fairness, for one of his 
position and employment. I knew him well, and occasionally rendered him a 
favor by preparing his horse bills. On one of these occasions, at my house, he 
gave a full and particular statement of the whole affair. Some of the details 
have escaped me, but the essential facts are distinctly recollected. The owner, 
with Engineer in possession, was met at some public place and the purchase 
completed, and this statement then made, 'ihat he had become involved in debt, 
and that his creditor had begun a prosecution, with a view to levy on the horse, 
the only property he possessed, and he was determined not to lose all.* This 
was certainly enough to arouse their suspicions with regard to his history. He 
declared the horse was bred and raised in Pennsylvania and that he was got 
by imported Messenger. Whether any further pedigree was given is not 
recollected. He was at this time (1814) a horse considerably advanced in years 
and perfectly white. Mr. Tappan also told me that he had afterward traced 
the horse, and was entirely satisfied of the former owner's veracity. I will 



messenger's sons. 243 

not apologize for the length of this statement, being desirous of giving you all 
the information here possessed and probably all that can now be obtained." 

I am not aware that in the past sixty years any question has 
ever been raised as to the truth of the universally accepted state- 
ment that Engineer was a true son of Messenger, and I would 
not have disturbed it now, nor thought of doing so, had it not 
been for that remarkable advertisement discovered in the obscure 
Long Island paper. That was contemporaneous history, how- 
ever, and it must either be explained or accepted. The question 
has been examined down to the bottom by one of the most con- 
scientious and capable men of his generation, in this department 
oi knowledge. His verdict has been accepted as the truth by all 
parties of that day, and I cannot reject it. 

It is not known that any of his immediate progeny attained 
distinction on the trotting turf. Several of his sons bore his 
name in the stud and while their blood seemed to be helpful in 
the right direction, only one of them made any mark as a sire of 
speed, and that was the horse known as Lewis' Engineer, the 
sire of the world beater. Lady Suffolk. Burdick's Engineer, 
another son, was taken to Washington County, New York, and 
got the dam of the famous Princess, which produced the great 
Happy Medium. In all these instances there was commingling 
with other strains from Messenger. 

Commander. — This was a grey horse, fully sixteen hands high 
and of massive proportions. He was a son of imported Messen- 
ger and out of a mare by imported Rockingham. This Rocking- 
ham was not a thoroughbred horse. Commander was bred in 
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and found his way to Long Island 
about 1812, where he was liberally patronized. His name fre- 
quently occurs among the remote crosses of good pedigrees, but 
his fame rests wholly on the progeny of his son. Young Com- 
mander, who was the sire of Screwdriver, Screws, Bull Calf and 
other good ones. This horse Young Commander was sometimes 
called "Bull" and sometimes "American Commander." 

Messenger, (Bush's), generally known as Bush Messenger. 
This son of Messenger was bred by James Dearin, of Dutchess 
County, New York, and was foaled 1807. His dam was a Vir- 
ginia mare, named Queen Ann, by Celer, son of imported Janus, 
and out of a mare by Skipwith's Figure, son of imported Figure, 
and she out of a mare imported by Colonel Miland, of Virginia. 
This pedigree was not accepted Avithout some misgivings, but as. 



^44 THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 

it was possible and as it had been indorsed sixty years ago by 
Cadwallader R. Golden and published before that by Mr. Dearin, I 
am disposed to accept it as reliable. 

He was sixteen hands high, a light grey, becoming white with 
age. He was excellent in form and probably the most handsome 
and attractive of all the sons of Messenger. The first public 
notice we have of him, he was advertised at the stable of his 
breeder, six miles south uf Poughkeepsie, in 1813. Soon after 
this he became the property of Philo 0. Bush, and this was the 
first horse, he says, that he ever owned. This Mr. Bush was a 
noted "character" in his day. From early manhood, through 
good and evil report, and until he died a very old man in poverty 
and want, he was a habitue of the race track. He knew all about 
race horses and their breeding, and he could prattle pedigrees 
from morning till night. Added to this knowledge which his 
life pursuits had placed in his possession, he was endowed with a 
most vivid imagination which was brought into the most active 
play whenever he found it necessary. To maintain his "reputa- 
tion" it seemed to be a necessity that he should be able to extend 
all pedigrees laid before him and give the remote crosses, whether 
he knew anything about them or not. He was the author of the 
running pedigree given to the dam of Major Winfield — Edward 
Everett, son of Hambletonian — and on it money was won in a 
bet. An investigation of just two minutes disclosed the facts 
that by established and known dates the whole thing was utterly 
impossible. He was literally a very "racy" raconteur, but his 
reminiscences soon became tedious, notwithstanding their bril- 
liancy, and it was always important to have a call to some busi- 
ness that cut off further entertainment from his repertoire. 

Mr. Bush says he paid one thousand seven hundred and forty 
dollars and a silver watch for this horse, and with him he got an 
elegant suit of clothing that had belonged to imported Express. 
It is said that he never ran but one race and that was at Pine 
Plains, in which he distanced all his competitors in the first heat. 
In 1816 Mr. Bush kept him at Kinderhook; 1817 at Kinderhook 
and Schodack; 1818 at Kinderhook and Albany; 1819-20 at 
Utica. In the autumn of 1820 he was sold to Dr. Millington, of 
Crooked Lake, Herkimer County, and he was kept there 1821- 
23. He was then sold to Edward Reynolds, of East Bloomfield, 
where he was kept three or four years, after which he made one 
•or more seasons at Le Roy, and he died at East Bloomfield in 



messenger's soxs. 245 

July, 1829. This horse had probably more trotting speed than 
any of the other sons of Messenger. Mr. Bush assured me that 
he could trot very fast for a horse of that day, and when led by 
the side of another horse he could beat three minutes very easily, 
but as Ave have to take Mr. Bush's assertions cum grano salts, we 
fortunately have very reliable testimony of contemporaneous date 
and from a source wholly disinterested. I have before me a 
letter written by Judge J. Porter, of East Bloomfield, dated June 
4, 1828, in reply to inquiries from some correspondent about the 
horse, his terms, etc. He writes as follows: 

" I should think he was a very swift trotter from what I have seen, and very 
sprightly and nearly white. He has got a great number of fine colts in this 
town which are three years old; and the probability of their drawing on the 
old horse's business is the reason of his being removed to Le Roy and Batavia." 

Whether Judge Porter was a horseman or not he certainly 
reflected, in this remark which I have emphasized, the leading 
quality for which Bush Messenger was distinguished in that region 
and in that day. 

Although he was certainly a very fast natural trotter, it is not 
known that he was ever trained an hour in his life, neither is it 
known that any fast or trained trotters ever came from his loins. 
This was the period of fast mail coaches running from Albany to 
Buffalo, and as the old proprietors of those great lines were 
pushed westward from State to State until they finally were 
driven across the Mississippi, I have many times heard them talk 
of the great slashing grey Messenger teams that would carry their 
coaches along at ten miles an hour, and lament that there were 
no such horses nowadays. There were other sons of Messenger 
and many grandsons, all known as "Messengers," but as a pro- 
genitor of horses suited to the stage coach this particular one 
tliat broke his neck in trying to get out of his inclosure was the 
premier. He probably came nearer filling the place in this 
country that his grandsire filled in England — English Mambrino 
— than any other one of the tribe, for we can truly say of him, as 
Pick said of his grandsire, "from his blood the breed of horses 
for the coach was brought nearly to perfection." 

Potomac was a bright bay, fifteen and a half hands high, and 
was bred by Daniel Youngs, of Oyster Bay, Long Island. He 
was foaled 1796 and got by imported Messenger; dam by imported 
Figure; grandam by Bashaw. He was put on the turf in the 



246 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

spring of 1799 and was a respectable race horse at short distances. 
He ran against and beat some of the best of his day. He was on 
the turf about three years. In the midst of his racing career he 
was purchased by Mr. Van Kanst for five hundred pounds. In 
1802 he was owned by Major William Jones, of Cold Spring Har- 
bor, and made some seasons there. In 1806 he was at New 
Windsor, Orange County, New York. In 1806 he was in charge 
•of Thomas Jackson, at Rahway, New Jersey, and 1811 at Cross- 
wicks, near Trenton, New Jersey. It is probable he died about 
this time, as we find no further trace of him. Most of his stock 
were bays, of good size, and very salable animals. Nothing can 
now be recalled that connects him with any of the trotting strains 
coming from his sire. He was not strictly running-bred on the 
side of his dam. 

Tippoo Saib was a bay horse with one white foot and was fully 
sixteen hands high, with plenty of bone. He was foaled 1795, 
got by imported Messenger; dam Mr. Thompson's imported 
mare by Northumberland; grandam by Snap, etc. His fine size 
and elegant pedigree made Tippoo Saib a very desirable horse to 
breed to, but for some cause he did not appear much on the turf. 
He ran a few races and went into the stud early, in the neigh- 
borhood of Trenton, New Jersey, and in the following year was 
at Goshen, Fishkill, and Pine Plains, New York. My impression 
is he was then returned to West Jersey and Bucks County, Penn- 
sylvania, where he was probably owned in his latter days. His 
sons Tippoo Sultan, Financier and others, acquired great fame on 
the turf. His connection with the trotting lines of descent is 
very distinct, but not very prominent. 

Sir Solomon was got by imported Messenger; dam Camilla by 
Cephalus; grandam Camilla by imported Fearnought and out of 
imported Calista, etc. He was foaled about 1800, bred by General 
Gunn, of Georgia, who seems to have kept Camilla and perhaps 
others in the North for the purpose of breeding. The pedigree 
on the side of this dam is an excellent one and would seem to 
justify the owner in seeking to get the best crosses possible into 
his stud. When five years old he was sold to Mr. Bond, of Phila- 
delphia, for two thousand dollars. His races were numerous and 
often successful, beating some of the best horses of his day, and 
among them the famous Miller's Damsel, also by Messenger, 
over the Harlem Course in heats of four miles. Not much is 
known of his stud services, and he seems to have been kept 



messenger's soxs. 247 

several years in Union Coianty, New Jersey. He seems to have 
labored under the disadvantage of having a greater horse of the 
same name — Badger's Sir Solomon by Tickle Toby — in competi- 
tion with bim, and thus the son of Tickle Toby would steal many 
a chaplet from the brow of his namesake, the son of Messenger. 

Ogdex Messenger was a grey horse, foaled 1806, got by im- 
ported Messenger; dam Katy Fisher, by imported Highflyer; 
grandam a mare imported by H. N. Cruger in 1786, by Cottager; 
great-grandam by Trentham; great-great-grandam by Henricus; 
great-great-great-grandam by Eegulus. The pedigree of this 
dam is correct, and she was doubtless entitled to rank as thor- 
oughbred. This horse was bred by Mr. Cruger, and at three 
years old was sold to David Ogden, and that summer he was pas- 
tured on the farm of Major William Jones, of Long Island, from 
Avhose books we have the foregoing facts. Mr. David W. Jones 
remarks: '"T retain a perfect recollection of him. He was at 
that time a large overgrown colt, not particularly ugly nor ex- 
ceedingly coarse, but having no special beauty nor finish. I can- 
not better describe him than to say he was a coarse pattern of a 
fine horse, with marked traits of his lineage." Mr. Jones evi- 
dently saw him at his worst age and before he fully reached his 
maturity. 

Judge Odgen, his owner, was a large landholder in St. Law- 
rence County, New York, and in the spring of 1810 he removed 
from New Jersey to an island of eight hundred acres in the St. 
Lawrence river, opposite the village of Haddington, and took the 
horse, then four years old, with him. It is not known that he 
•ever ran a race for money, and it is not probable he ever did, for 
it was his owner's aim and object to improve the stock of the 
•country as well as his own, in which he was successful. After 
five or six years he was taken to Lowville in Lewis County, and 
made several seasons there in charge of Charles Bush, and from 
this fact he came to be known there, locally, as Bush Messenger. 
Thus it happened that there were two sous of imported Messen- 
ger in the State of New York at the same time, and both known 
as Bush Messenger, and to these we might add a grandson and a 
great-grandson in the State of Maine, and at later date both 
named "Bush Messenger." It was at one time supposed that 
Mr. Ogden's horse while at Lowville became the sire of the 
famous Tippoo of Canada that became the head of a very valua- 
ble tribe of ti otters and pacers, but later developments showed 



2-48 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

that this was a mistake. (He appears to have alternated in his' 
services between Lewis and Jetferson counties, but whether 
weekly or yearly I cannot state. He was taken to Lowville as 
early as 1815 and was there five or six years.) 

The facts about this horse have been developed from much 
correspondence with different parties, but more especially from 
Mr. V. Sheldon, of Canton, New York, and from Mr. P. F. 
Daniels, of Prescott, Ontario.' Both men knew the horse person- 
ally, and Mr. Daniels was seventy-five years old when he wrote.. 
He still had a very clear recollection of the horse in his appear- 
ance and style of action. In describing him he says: ''He was 
peculiarly marked about his hocks and knees, having a series of 
dark rings about his limbs, continuing at intervals down to his. 
hoofs, and many of his sons and daughters were marked the 
same way." Having ridden him many times he says: "He^ 
had a long flinging step and was a fast trotter. His action was 
high and not easy to the rider, and he could not widen behind 
as some of our modern trotters." 

When Mr. Daniels was a young man he was engaged in carry- 
ing the mail, and in March, 1821, he believes it was. Judge 
Ogden gave him an order to bring the horse home from Lewis 
County. He led him all the way behind his mail conveyance 
and delivered him safely to young Mr. Ogden, who gave him to 
an Irish groom named Daley, and Daley remarked he would soon 
make him look like another horse. That night he gave him an 
overfeed of corn and he died of colic. He was never advertised 
while at home and he was not very liberally patronized. The 
Freemans and the Archibalds, however, Mr. Daniels says, bred 
to him largely. His stock were good and many of them excel- 
lent, especially those descended through his sons Blossom and 
Freeman's Messenger. 

Mambrino (Grey). — This son of Messenger was foaled about 
1800, his dam was by Pulaski, grandam by Wilkes; great-gran- 
dam by True Briton. He was bred by Benjamin C. Ridgeway, 
near Mount Holly, New Jersey. In 1807 he stood at Flemington 
under the name of Fox Hunter. He was purchased by Eichard 
Isaac Cooper, who resold him to William Atkinson for about one 
thousand two hundred dollars. He was a flea-bitten grey, mane 
and tail white, handsome and stylish, about sixteen hands high, 
head medium size, and a good, well-formed horse at every point, 
except his feet, which were big and flat. He was probably never 



messenger's sons. 249 

harnessed and was a very popular stallion in Salem and adjoin- 
ing counties for many years. Mr. Atkinson was a very prom- 
inent and influential member of the Society of Friends, and 
''Billy" Atkinson was always a welcome guest as he traveled 
through Salem, Gloucester, and Burlington counties with his 
horse, and his genial good humor made him as popular as his 
horse. He always claimed great sjieed for his horse, but owing 
to his position in the society he never could gratify his friends 
by showing it. AVhen his offspring came into service they were 
not only performers of great merit on the road and the course, 
but they had bone and substance that fitted them for every kind 
of labor required of them. All the Quakers had Mambrinos and 
nothing else, after "Billy" Atkinson and his horse had been 
among them a few years. Some of his descendants attained to 
great local fame as trotters and some did well as runners. He 
was a very valuable horse and left a wonderfully numerous and 
valuable offspring. 

Black Messenger. — Among all the progeny of Messenger, 
this is the only one that I can now recall that was black. He 
was bred by William Haselton, of Burlington County, New 
Jersey, and out of a mare highly prized in the Haselton family, 
but her blood cannot now be traced. He was foaled in 1801 and 
on the death of Mr. Haselton in 1804 he was sold to Charles or 
Richard Wilkins of Evesham, ten miles from Camden, New 
Jersey, who owned him till he died at an advanced age. As the 
birth of this horse is fixed by documentary evidence at 1801 it sug- 
gests that Messenger was kept in Burlington County, New 
Jersey, the unplaced season of 1800. Still as he was at Lawrence- 
ville in the fall season of 1800 it is possible the mare was sent to 
him there. He was full sixteen hands high and possessed great 
muscular development and strength of bone. He was not hand- 
some, but his figure and style were very commanding. In his 
day he was regarded as one of the best natural trotters ever in 
Burlington or Gloucester counties. This was not the claim of his 
owner merely, but the unprejudiced opinion of all the horsemen 
who knew him. His stock were very highly prized as horses 
suited to all purposes and especially for fast road work. Some 
of them were greatly distinguished locally as fast trotters, and 
among them was Nettle, the dam of the famous Dutchman, that 
was the greatest trotter of his day. 

Whynot Messenger, Pizzant's Messenger, Austin's Messen- 



250 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ger, and Cousin's Messenger were all sons of Messenger and got 
by him while he was in West Jersey, but as nothing has been 
developed concerning their maternal breeding nor the character 
of their progeny, I will pass them over with this bare record that 
such horses existed. 

Saratoga. — This son of Messenger was a flea-bitten grey and 
was foaled about 1805. It is believed he was bred on Long 
Island, but nothing is known of the blood of his dam. He was 
driven in harness and did service in several counties in Penn- 
sylvania, and was sold at auction in Philadelphia to James Du- 
bois of Salem, New Jersey. He was a great, strong horse, and was 
kept at work on the farm of his owner, covering mares only as. 
opportunity offered. He was a slashing trotter, but it was only 
when his owner was away from home and got an extra drink or 
two that anybody ever had an opportunity to see how fast he 
could go. A number of his progeny were fast trotters; among 
them a mare called Charlotte Gray that was the fastest of her 
day in all that region. Among his sons, one called Dove was 
greatly distinguished in the stud. 

Nestor and Delight. — These were sons of Messenger, the 
former bred in Orange County, New York, in 1802, and was at 
Warwick in that county, 1807 in charge of Nehemiah Finn. The 
latter was bred in Westchester County in 1806, and made the 
season of 1827 at Warwick, New York, in charge of John Gr. 
Blauvelt, and is probably the horse that was more widely known 
as Blanvelt's Messenger. The breeding of the dams of both 
these horses is very uncertain. 

Mount Holly was a grey horse, fifteen and a half hands high. 
He was foaled about 1807 and was bred by Colonel Udell, of Long 
Island. His dam was by Bajazet, and his grandam was by Ba- 
shaw. Not much is known of him till he was well advanced in 
years and was taken to Dutchess County. Daniel T. Cock knew 
him well on the island, and he assured me he was a trotter in the 
true sense of the word. The late Mr. Daniel B. Haight, a horse- 
man of excellent judgment and knowledge, knew him very well, 
and he describes him as of the true Messenger grey, and a smooth, 
well-finished horse all over. His offspring were smooth, hand- 
some, and remarkably tough, and from their kindly tempers they 
were easily managed and made horses fit for any service. The 
most noted of his get were the famous trotters Paul Pry and Mr. 
Tredwell's grey mare that went to England. His cross appears 



messenger's sons. 251 

in the pedigrees of many trotters and is very highly prized to 
this day. In the latter part of his life he was owned by Jacob 
Husted, of Washington Hollow, New York, and made several 
seasons there. His sight failed entirely as he grew old, and he 
died about 1835. With two such performers from his own loins 
as Paul Pry and the Tredwell mare, it cannot be doubted that 
he inherited and transmitted the true Messenger "trotting in- 
stinct," and that without any assistance from the blood of his 

Plato was a large brown horse, fully sixteen hands high, and 
was a full brother to Bishop's Hambletonian, being by Messen- 
ger, out of Pheasant. He was bred by General Coles, of Long 
Island, and was foaled 1802. As he matured the general judg- 
ment was that his limbs were too light for his body, and this is 
the only instance that I can recall where the get of Messenger 
failed at this vital point. He was trained and ran a few races, 
and from a trial with Miller's Damsel General Coles said he was the 
best horse that ever ran against that famous mare. In a race 
against his half-brother. Sir Solomon, he won the first heat of 
four miles and broke down in the second, which finished him as 
a race horse. He was a larger and a handsomer horse than his 
full brother Hambletonian, but at no other point was he so good. 
When they stood in the same stable he was advertised at a lower 
price. He was a number of years in the stud on Long Island, 
New Jersey, and the river counties of New York, and after 1816 
at Pine Plains there is no further trace of him. In his physical 
structure and doubtless, in his mental structure also, he took after 
his dam, and the only link now recalled coupling him with the 
trotter is the fact that he was the sire of the dam of Lewis' Engi- 
neer, that was the sire of the great Lady Suffolk. 

Dover Messenger was a grey horse, and was got by imported 
Messenger, but the blood of his dam and the year he was foaled 
are unknown. He was kept several seasons at South Dover, 
Dutchess County, New York, and left a very valuable progeny 
strongly endowed with the instinct to trot. He was taken to 
the town of Russia, in Herkimer County, where he died. There 
was a younger horse bearing practically the same name, a son of 
Mambrino Paymaster, with which this horse has often been con- 
founded. 

Coriander. — This son of Messenger was a bay horse, about 
fifteen and a half hands high; was foaled in Queens County, New 



252 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

York, about 1796, and his dam was by Allen's Brown Figure; 
grandam by Rainbow; great-grandam by Dauphin. He seems to 
have been kept on Long Island as long as he lived. His progeny 
was much like their sire, and Mr. D, W. Jones describes them as 
* 'clean, wiry, and brilliant. In their make-up there seemed 
nothing wasted and nothing wanted." He ran some races, as did 
many of his get. He was bred upon one of the early daughters 
of Hambletonian, and she produced the great trotter "Old Top- 
gallant," the sensation of his period and one of the most famous 
of the very early trotters. One of the most remarkable facts in 
the history of this remarkable old gelding is that he ran some 
races before he was trained to trot. 

Fagdown. — This son of Messenger was bred on the Jersey 
side of the Delaware, not far from Philadelphia, and was foaled, 
I think, in 1803. His dam was represented to be by Diomed, and 
if this be correct it must have been Tate's imported Diomed that 
was imported into New Jersey and kept there a number of years. 
This was a bay horse and must not be confounded with the 
chestnut horse of the same name imported into Virginia. Fag- 
down became vicious and dangerous, and from this trait in his 
character he was generally called the "Man Eater." He was 
kept in the region of Philadelphia and south of there for many 
years, and left a very numerous and very valuable progeny. They 
were noted for their superior qualities as road horses, and some 
of them were very fast, for their day. For a number of years no 
family of horses were so popular about Philadelphia as the Fag- 
downs. He had a son called Cropped Fagdown that was fast, and 
another son called Jersey Fagdown that trotted some races 
against the great Andrew Jackson. Another son, named after 
his sire, was bred in Northeastern Maryland, and was taken to 
Eastern Ohio in 1829, and he was kept in Columbiana, Mahoning, 
and Jefferson counties for at least ten years. He was never in 
a race nor never trained, but his Quaker patrons all insisted that 
when led by the side of another horse he could trot as fast as a 
pretty good horse could run. This grandson of Messenger was 
the sire of the grandam of Wapsie, the well-known trotter and 
sire of Iowa. 

Bright Phoebus Avas foaled 1804, the same year as Hamble- 
tonian. He was out of the imported Pot-8-os mare, and his 
breeeder. General Coles, of Long Island, sold him to Bond and 
Hughes, of Philadelphia. His most noted achievement was at 



messenger's sons. 253 

Washington, D. C, in 1808, when in a sweepstakes he more than 
distanced the great Sir Archy, by catching him when he had the 
distemper. His racing career was respectable, but not brilliant, 
and when that ended it is not known what became of him. 

Slasher, Shaftsbury, Hotspur. — There was quite a famous 
brood mare owned somewhere in Jersey called Jenny Duter, or 
Jenny Oiter, as some authorities have it. She was got by True 
Briton; dam Quaker Lass by imported Juniper; grandam Molly 
Pacolet, by imported Pacolet, etc., tracing on six or eight more 
crosses that are all fudge. This mare was bred to Messenger about 
1801, and produced Shaftsbury; her daughter by Liberty was bred 
to him about the same time and produced Slasher, and about the 
same time her granddaughter by Slender was also bred to him and 
produced Hotspur. These three sons of Messenger do not seem 
to have ever been trained, and very little ©f their history can be 
traced, except that they were kept as stallions in different parts 
of New Jersey. It is not known that their blood has had any in- 
fluence upon the American trotting horse. 

Messenger (Hutchinson's). — This was a large grey horse, 
foaled in 1792, and bred by Mathias Hutchinson, of Pennsylvania, 
near Philadelphia. His dam was by Hunt's Grey Figure, son of 
imported Figure. He was kept in Monmouth County, Kew 
Jersey, 1797, and it is probable that he was often represented as 
imported Messenger himself. I have no knowledge of this horse 
or his progeny beyond the mere facts here given. 

Messenger (Cooper's). — This son of imported Messenger was 
generally known as "Cooper's Grey" and sometimes as Ringgold. 
He was sixteen hands high and was foaled about 1803. He was 
bred in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and was kept about 
Philadelphia, on both sides of the Delaware, till 1821, when he 
was sold by the administrators of Jacob Kirk, and it has been 
said he was taken to the Wabash by Amos Cooper. He ran some 
races when he was young, and was a horse of a good deal of local 
fame. He was liberally patronized in the stud and left valuable 
progeny. It has been suggested that probably he was the sire of 
Amazonia, the dam of Abdallah; but as there is nothing to sup- 
port this suggestion except the mere matter of location, and as 
all that has ever been claimed for her paternity is that she was 
by "a son of Messenger," we must not forget that there were 
plenty of other sons of Messenger in the same locality that might 
have been her sire. 



354 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

The name "Messenger" was more sadly abused m its 
duplication in the closing of the last and the early decades of 
the present century than that of any other horse, or perhaps of 
all other horses of that period put together. Multitudes of his 
sons were called "Messenger," and, in the next gener'ation, mul- 
titudes of his grandsons gloried in the same cognomen, and thus 
generation after generation jjerpetuated it, in widening circles, 
till "confusion became worse confounded," leaving the historian 
in helpless and hopeless ignorance as to what was true and what 
was false. When grey horses in the second, third, or fourtli re- 
move from the imported horse became old, it required but little 
"diplomacy" to satisfy the public that they were true sous of 
the original, and this became the custom. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

messenger's descendants. 

History of Abdallah — Characteristics of his dam, Amazonia — Speculations as to 
her blood — Description of Abdallah — Almack, progenitor of the Champion 
line — Mambrino Paymaster, sire of Mambrino Chief — History and pedigree 
— Mambrino Messenger — Harris' Hambletoniau — Judson's Hambletonian — 
Andrus' Hambletonian, sire of the famous Princess, Happy Medium's dam. 

Abdallah. — This grandson of Messenger has been popularly 
and justly designated as the "king of trotting sires of his genera- 
tion." He was bred by John Tredwell, of Queens County, Long 
Island, and was foaled 1823. His sire was Mambrino, son of 
Messenger, and his dam was Amazonia, one of the most distin- 
guished trotters of her day. Concerning the breeding and origin 
of Amazonia there has been great diversity of opinion among 
horsemen and a great amount of controversy among writers. 
It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of the questions 
raised on this point, but I would hardly be doing justice to his- 
tory to pass it over unnoticed. I will, therefore, try to give a 
brief synopsis of the history and the arguments urged, and refer 
the reader to the first and second volumes of Wallace's Monthly 
for a more extended consideration of the questions raised. 

The first representation of her pedigree was that she was a 
daughter of imported Messenger, and the next was that she was 
by a son of Messenger. On the first claim, that she was by Mes- 
senger, no argument was possible, one way or the other, on 
account of dates; but against the second claim, that she was by 
a, son of Messenger, the arguments were numerous and vehement. 
All these arguments were based wholly upon her coarse external 
conformation and the absence of all resemblance to the Messen- 
ger family. Among the supporters of this view Avere many of 
the most intelligent and trustworthy horsemen of the whole 
country. Indeed, the preponderance of intelligence as well as 
numbers seemed to be on that side. That she had "coarse, 
ragged hips," that she had a "rat tail," that she "had hair 



256 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

enough on her legs to stuff a mattress," that she was "a muddy 
sorrel," etc., were all urged to prove that she was not by a son of 
Messenger. It is true that many entered into this controversy 
who never saw the mare and who knew nothing about her appear- 
ance, but there were others who knew her perfectly, among them 
my venerable friend David W. Jones, to whom we are all indebted 
for so many treasures from his storehouse of very valuable 
memories. 

On the other side there were some little scraps of history, that 
at the vital point may have been history or may have been fiction. 
In the certificate of sale of x4.bdallah, April 27, 1830, to Mr. Isaac 
Snediker, his breeder, Mr. John Tredwell, says: "And believe him 
to be the very heat bred trotting stallion in this country, and be 
it enough to know that his sire was Mambrino and his dam Ama- 
zonia." It has been argued that it would be very inconsistent for 
a man of Mr. Tredwell's standing to certify that Abdallah "was the 
very best bred trotting stallion in this country," if he knew nothing 
of the blood of his dam, drawing the inference that he must 
have known and believed the representations of his nephew, B. 
T. Kissam, from whom he got Amazonia. The story of the 
original purchase of Amazonia by B. T. Kissam and given to me 
by his brother, Timothy T. Kissam, in 1870, is as follows: Ama- 
zonia was purchased by B. T. Kissam, a dry goods merchant of 
New York, when on an excursion of pleasure in the vicinity of 
Philadelphia about 1814. She was brought out of a team and 
was then four years old past, his attention having been called to 
her as an animal of much promise. He used her for his own 
driving a short time and sold her to his uncle, John Tredwell. 
"Amazonia was represented to my brother to have been a get of 
imported Messenger," 

Now, in considering whether this scrap of history is probably 
true, the geographical question has been urged with telling effect. 
Messenger had been kept a number of years on both sides of the 
Delaware, right on the way to Philadelphia, his fee had been 
above that of any other stallion, and a large |)ercentage of his 
colts had been kept entire. In no part of the country, perhaps, 
were there so many sons of Messenger seeking public patronage. 
The geography and the chronology of the question, therefore, 
both sustain the probability of its truthfulness. Whether Mr. 
Kissam crossed the river at Trenton, or Burlington, or Camden 
he was right in the hotbed of the sons of Messenger. "If 



messenger's descendants. 257 

Amazonia" it has been asked, ''was as coarse and forbidding as 
represented in her appearance, what induced Mr. Kissam to buy 
her?" He wanted a carriage horse and he wanted one that could 
not only show good action, but one that had a right of inherit- 
ance to good action. He knew the Messengers and knew that 
beauty and style were not family traits in that tribe. Many of 
them were coarse, and possibly as coarse as Amazonia. Her very 
coarseness and lack of style is, under the circumstances, a strong 
argument that in choosing her Mr. Kissam had regard for her 
Messenger blood. 

Another argument, resting on "the internal evidences," has 
been urged with considerable force and it is very hard to answer 
it. Amazonia was a mare of tested and known speed. She was 
in a nurnber of races to saddle and had won several of them in 
less than three minutes along about 181G-18, and when Major 
William Jones, in 1820, accepted the challenge to produce a horse 
that could trot a mile in three minutes for one thousand dollars, 
he knew very well what he was doing, for he had seen Amazonia 
do it a number of times. Her best time was about 2:54, which 
in that day was considered phenomenally fast. If we were to 
meet a running horse out on the plains that could run away from 
all others, we would naturally and justly conclude that he had 
some of the blood of the race horse in his veins. If we have a 
pacer and we learn he came from a section of the country where 
a certain tribe of pacers abounded, we would naturally conclude 
that he belonged to that tribe, especially if we knew there were 
no other pacers in that section. If we have a trotter that can 
go away from all other trotters, and we know that this trotter 
came from a section abounding in a family of trotters, and in noth- 
ing else that can trot, we naturally and justly conclude that this 
trotter came from some member of that family of trotters. This 
argument from the "internal evidences" seems almost axiomatic, 
and when taken in connection with the historical argument, 
unsatisfactory though it be, they together lay the foundation 
for a very strong probability that Amazonia was by a son of 
Messenger. 

Abdallah was in color a beautiful bay, about fifteen and a half 
hands high, and there was a measure of coarseness about him that 
he could not well escape, as both his sire and dam were endowed 
with that undesirable quality. The one exception to this was in 
the character of his coat, which was very fine and glossy when in 



258 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

healthy coudition. His reputation as a great trotting sire was 
very widely extended during his lifetime, but his lack of sym- 
metry and his "rat tail," which he inherited from his dam, so 
impaired his acceptability with the public that he never was 
very largely patronized. Besides this he had an unconquerable 
Avill of his own, which he transmitted to his offspring very gener- 
ally. This willfulness was not a desirable quality in a horse for 
drudgery, and hence most of his patrons were such as were 
seeking for gameness and speed. When lie was four years old he 
was not in tlie stud, and it is understood that Mr. Tredwell un- 
dertook to break him thoroughly and train him that year. It is 
also understood that when put in harness he kicked everything 
to pieces within his reach and that atl thoughts of training were 
soon abandoned. He never was in harness again until, in ex- 
treme old age, he was sold for five dollars to a fish peddler, and 
the peddler's wagon was soon reduced to kindling wood. 

He was kept at different points on Long Island, and one season 
in New Jersey, till the fall of 1839, when he, with Commodore, 
another son of Mambrino, was sold to Mr. John W. Hunt, of Lex- 
ington, Kentucky, where they made the season of 1840. Com- 
modore was much the more attractive horse of the two, and did 
a large business, Avhile Abdallah was almost wholly neglected, 
leaving only about half a dozen colts. Meantime his progeny on 
the island began to show their speed and their racing qualities; a 
company was formed and he was brought back from Kentucky 
and made the seasons of 1841 and 1842 at the Union Course, 
Long Island. He was at Goshen, New York, 1843, at Freehold, 
New Jersey, 1844 and 1845, at Chester, New York, 1846-47-48, at 
Bull's Head, New York, 1849, and did nothing, then at the 
Union Course and Patchogue, Long Island, and was not off the 
island again. After the period of his usefulness was past his in- 
human owners turned him out on a bleak, sandy beach on the 
Long Island shore, and there he starved to death in the piercing 
November winds, without a shelter or a friend. 

Abdallah was the sire of Hambletonian, 10, the greatest of all 
trotting progenitors and greater than all others combined. This 
fact alone has made his name imperishable in the annals of the 
trotting horse. A number of his other sons were kept for stal- 
lions and some of them lived to old age, but they were all failures 
in the stud. His daughters, generally, proved to be most valua- 
ble brood mares, producing speed to almost any and every cross. 



messenger's descendants. 259 

.A pedigree tracing to an "Abdallah mare" has always enhanced 
the value of a family. 

Almack. — Mr. John Tredwell bred his famous team of driving 
mares, Amazonia and Sophonisba, to Mambrino in the spring of 
1822, and the next year they each produced a bay liorse colt that 
he named Abdallah and Almack. Sophonisba, the dam of 
Almack, was a superior mare, but she was not fast enough for her 
mate. Almack, however, was a good horse and left some trot- 
ters. I have no particular description of him at hand and noth- 
ing can now be given of his history further than that some of his 
daughters produced well and that he seems to have been kept all 
his life on Long Island. His dam Sophonisba was got by a grand- 
son of imported Baronet, as represented, but this is so indefinite 
^s to be unsatisfactory and suspicious. As none of the Baronets 
could ever trot, even "a little bit," it is evident that whatever 
trotting inheritance Almack possessed came to him from his 
sire. Aside from a number of his descendants that were recog- 
nized trotters of merit there was one in particular that established 
Almack as a progenitor of a great family of trotters. A son of 
his bred by George Haynor, of Huntington, Long Island, in 1842, 
and known as the "Raynor Colt," out of Spirit by Engineer II., 
sire of Lady Suffolk, was led behind a sulky at a fair at Hunting- 
ton, when he was eighteen months old, and he went so fast and 
showed such a magnificent way of doing it, that he was named 
^'Champion" by William T. Porter, editor of the Spirit of the 
Times. At three years old he was driven a full mile in 3:05 and 
this was a 'Vorld's record" for colts of that age at that time. In 
1846 he was purchased by William E. Grinnell for two thousand 
six hundred dollars and taken to Cayuga County, where he 
founded a great tribe of trotters that is now known everywhere 
as the "Champion Family." A fuller account of this horse will 
be found at another place in this volume. 

Mambrino Paymaster (widely known in later years as Blind 
Paymaster). — This was a large, strong-boned, dark-bay horse, 
sixteen hands and an inch high. When young he was somewhat 
light and leggy, but with age he spread out and became a horse 
of substance. He was bred by Azariah Arnold, of the town of 
Washington, in Dutchess County, New York. There is some 
uncertainty about the year this horse was foaled, but it was some- 
where between 1822 and 1826. He was got by Mambrino, son of 
Messenger, and his dam was represented to be by imported Pay- 



2G0 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

master. The late Mr. Edwin Thorne made a statement a few 
years ago that in an interview with Azariah Arnold he said that 
he did not know or remember the horse that was the sire of the 
dam. At that time Mr. Arnold was very old, and doubtless his 
mental faculties very much impaired, 'so it would not l^e remark- 
able that he should have forgotten all about it. On the other 
hand. Nelson Haight, Daniel B. Haight, Seth P. Hopson, and 
others of like high character, maintain that Mr. Arnold, in his 
younger days, always represented the mare to be by Paymaster, 
and the name of the horse itself is very strong evidence that he 
did so represent it, and is a standing proclamation to that effect. 
There can be no possible doubt that in earlier life Mr. Arnold 
constantly represented this mare to be by Paymaster; neither can 
there be any reasonable doubt that when his faculties were im- 
paired with age he told Mr. Thorne that he did not remember 
her pedigree. Mr. Arnold's neighbors all agree that he was a 
man of unblemished character and incapable of a willful misrepre- 
sentation, when in possession of his faculties. Again, that this 
Paymaster cross was not only possible, but probable, is shown by 
the fact that imported Paymaster was kept by Ebenezer Haight, 
in the year 1807, in the same township with Azariah Arnold, and 
the years 1808 and 1809 in the same part of the county. There- 
fore, Mr. Thorne to the contrary notwithstanding, I have but 
little doubt that the" Paymaster cross is correct. 

He had a small star in his forehead and a little white on one 
hind foot. His back, loin and hips were altogether superior, and 
those who knew him best say they never saw his equal at these 
points. His head was large and bony, with an ear after the 
Mambrino model. His neck was of medium length and his 
shoulder good. His hind legs were quite crooked and too much 
cut in below the hock in front, giving the legs at that point a 
narrow and weak appearance; his hocks were large and at the 
curb place showed a fullness. His cannon bones, all round, were 
short for a horse of his size, and his feet were excellent. He was 
slow in maturing, but when he filled out he lost all that narrow, 
weedy appearance which characterized his colthood. He was not 
beautiful, but powerful. 

About 1828 he was sold and taken to Binghamton, New York. 
Meantime his colts came forward and proved to be so valuable 
that Nelson and Daniel B. Haight and Gilbert Jones purchased 
and brought him back to Dutchess County about the year 1840. 



messenger's descend a IS'TS. 261 

He was not a sure foal-getter, but his stock proved to be of great 
Talue. When brought back from Broome County he was blind. 
He made one season on Long Island in charge of George Tappan; 
the other seasons till 1847 he was kept in Dutchess County in the 
neighborhood of his owners. In 1847 he was sold to Mr. Gilbert 
Holmes and taken to Vermont, where he died after getting one 
colt. Many of his sons were kept as stallions, but the most 
famous of his get were the mares lola and Lady Moore, and last 
but not least, his famous son Mambrino Chief, the founder of a 
great family of trotters in Kentucky. His stock were probably 
more noted and more highly prized than that of any of the sons 
of Mambrino that stood in Dutchess County. As Abdallah was 
the link by which the greatest of all trotting families are con- 
nected with Messenger, so Mambrino Paymaster is the link 
through which the family easily entitled to second place reaches 
the same illustrious original. 

Mambrino Jr. (Bone Swinger) was a beautiful bay horse, 
foaled 182-, got by Mambrino, son of Messenger; dam not 
traced. He was bred on Long Island and Avas owned by George 
Tappan, near Jericho, Long Island. About 1833-4 he made 
some seasons at Washington Hollow, Dutchess County. He was 
^bout fifteen hands three inches high and was considered more 
blood-like and handsome than most of his family. He was a 
strong breeder, giving most of his colts his own elegant color. 

Mambrino Messenger (commonly known as the Burton 
Horse) was foaled about 1821. He was got by Mambrino, son of 
Messenger; dam by Coffin's Messenger, son of Messenger; grandam 
by Black and All Black; greut-grandam by Feather. He was bred 
by Abram Burton, of Washington Hollow, New York. He was a 
beautiful bay, about fifteen hands three inches high, and was the 
same age as Mambrino Paymaster, and they were rivals for a 
number of years, each having his friends and adherents. He was 
finer in the bone, having more finish and beauty than his rival, 
and what was still more effective with the public, he could out- 
trot him. Many of his offspring proved to be most excellent 
roadsters and some of them were fast. He was probably taken to 
Western New York, but I have not found any trace of his loca- 
tion or history. This name, Mambrino Messenger, was borne by 
several other horses of different degrees of affinity to the orig- 
inals. 

Hambletonian (Harris') (also known as Bristol Grey and 



2G3 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Remington Horse). — This was a grey horse, about sixteeli hands 
high, and possessed great strength and substance. When young 
he was an iron grey and probably pretty dark, but as he advanced 
in age he became lighter in color. His head was large and bony, 
with great width between the eyes. He was short in the back, 
with long hips, and the rise of the withers commenced far back, 
showing a fine, oblique shoulder. He was a horse of unusually 
large bone formation; his limbs were large, but flat and clean, 
with a heavy growth of hair at the fetlocks. He was of docile and 
kindly disposition and Avorked well either alone or with another. 
His gait was open and decided and at a walk his long slinging 
steps carried him over the ground unusually fast. His speed as 
a trotter was never developed, but his action at that gait was so 
free, open and square that those who knew him well have in- 
sisted tliat his manner of going indicated the possibility of great 
improvement, if he had been handled with that view. His oif- 
spring were slow in maturing, and for many years, indeed till 
toward the end of his life, he was not appreciated as a stallion. 
He was in constant competition with the little, plump, trim and 
trappy Morgans, and at three and four years old his long, lathy, 
plain colts cut but a sorry figure against the well formed and 
fully developed Morgans of their own age. With such a rivalry, 
sustained by the question of profit to the breeder by early sales, 
it is not remarkable that he should have been neglected, till it 
was clearly demonstrated that he transmitted the true Messenger 
trotting instinct in greater strength than any of his competitors. 
He was bred by Isaac Munson, of Wallingford, Vermont; foaled 
1823, got by Bishop's Hambletonian, son of Messenger; dam the 
Munson mare that was brought from Boston, 1813. There never 
has been any question about the sire of this horse, but up to 
18G9 the representation made by Mr. Harris that his dam was 
an imported English mare was generally accepted as the truth. 
I was led to doubt this, and in December of that year I made a 
thorough search of the records of the custom-house in Boston, 
and found the claim was without any foundation whatever. 
Through the kindness of Mr. Henry D. Noble I was enabled to 
get beyond Mr. Harris, who really knew nothing about the mare, 
back to the Munson family, and to Mr. Joseph Tucker, the 
earliest and best authority living in 1870. In order that this evi- 
dence may be preserved I will here insert Mr. Tucker's letter 
entire. 



messenger's descekdaxts. 263 

" MiLFORD, X. H., May 4tli, 1870. 
" Mr. J. H. Wallace, Muscatine, Iowa. 

" Dear Sir: Yours of 22d of April is duly received and contents noted. I 
was 24 years old when first acquainted with the dam of the ' Hiirris Horse,' so 
called, in the fall of 1813. Was then carrying on a farm, now owned by Wm. 
Randall, Esq., in this town, for Mr. Israel Munson, a commission merchant 
then doing business on India Street, and afterward on Central Wharf, Boston. 
I was in Boston in the fall of 1813, as above, and found the dam (of Hamble- 
tonian) and mate in Mr. Munson's possession. He said they had been ' leaders ' 
in a stage team, and they acted as if green about holding back, etc. He never 
said she was imported from England, neither did I hear such a story till two 
or three years ago. The dam was called ' a Messenger.' All the description I 
can give of her is that she was a strong, well-built, light dapple grey, and would 
weigh ten hundred, certain. The span was well matched. The nigh one (the 
dam) was more serviceable than the other. Led them all the way from Boston 
behind an ox team; kept them till the middle of April and then returned the 
pair to Boston. Mr. Munson drove them up, only stopping to dinner, when on 
his way to Vermont in August, 1814, and I didn't see them again until Decem- 
ber. I then drove them from Boston to Vermont, and used them a year on the 
Munson farm, on Otter Creek, in Wallingford. In June, 1815, I took them to 
Phoenix Horse (bay, black mane and tail, good looking and smart) in Clarendon 
Flats. Both stood and had foals the spring after I left Mr. Munson's employ. 
The off mare was occasionally a little lame, I think in the off fore foot, when 
hard drove, but the nigli one was perfectly free from lameness or limping. I 
left Mr. Munson in the spring of 1816, and know nothing of mares afterward. 
" Yours truly, Joseph Tucker, 

"(By Geo. W. Fox)." 

1 have given this letter entire, with the exception of a few 
closing sentences, that the public may be able to judge of its 
authenticity. That these mares were leaders in a stage team 
when Mr. Munson bought them is confirmed by members of the 
Munson family, and that the nigh mare was represented to be a 
Messenger at the time of the purchase I have not the least 
doubt. But whether she was really a Messenger is quite another 
question. All I can say is, it was possible in the nature of 
things; and the employment and qualities of the mare, together 
with the representations of Mr. Munson, appear to make it 
probable. During the mare's lifetime I find she was spoken of 
in the Munson family and about Wallingford as "the imported 
Messenger mare" and in this phrase, no doubt, was the origin of 
the story that she was herself imported. When this phrase, 
through her son, reached the next outer circle, "imported Mes- 
senger mare" no longer meant a mare by imported Messenger, 
but an imported mare by Messenger. 



264 THE HOESE OF AMEKICA. 

At the point where Mr. Tucker's knowledge of this mare ceases, 
fortunately Mr. Isaac B. Munson, of Wallingford, takes up the 
history and carries it forward, with great particularity, to the 
time of her death about 1826. She produced several foals by 
different horses, and while they were all valuable animals, the 
only one that is known to history is the subject of this sketch. 
When Hambletonian of Vermont was two years old Mr. Munson 
sold him to Samuel Edgerton and others, of Wallingford, and 
they kept him in the stud till about 1828, when they sold him to 
Mr. Eddy, of Bristol, Vermont, and in the hands of the Eddy 
family he was kept at Bristol, New Haven, and other points in 
and about Addison County till about 1835, when he was kept one or 
two years again in Wallingford and adjacent towns. About 1837 
he was sold to Joshua Eemington, of Huntington, Vermont, and 
was taken there. He stood in various parts of Chittenden 
County, and became well known as the "Remington Horse." 
Unfortunately there is no guide to dates in these transfers and 
it is not known just how long Mr. Eemington owned him. He 
next passed into the hands of Mr. Russell Harris, New Haven, 
Connecticut, and remained his till he died late in the year 1847. 

The location of this, horse was unfavorable either to a large or 
to a numerous progeny of trotters. He was surrounded Avith 
Morgan blood, trappy and stylish and fast growing in popularity 
on the supposition that they were trotters — a most valuable tribe 
as family horses, but none of them were able to trot fast without 
the introduction of trotting blood from the outside. He lived in 
a period antedating the real development of the trotter and the 
keeping of records of performances, and hence we must not 
judge of his merits as a trotting sire by comparing the list of his 
performers with lists of later generations. Green Mountain 
Maid was one of the best of her day and made a record of 2:28? 
in 1853, and the same year the famous pacing gelding Hero 
made a record of 2:20-j. Probably tlie best trotter from his loins 
was Sontag, with a wagon record in 1855 of 2:31. This mare 
was originally a pacer, and whether his dam was by imported 
Messenger or not we must conclude that the tendency to the 
lateral action was strong in his progeny. Lady Shannon, 
Trouble, Vermont, Modesty, and True John were all famous per- 
formers in their day. The last named was kept in the stud a 
fcAV years and was known as the Hanchett Horse. He fell into 
the hands of Sim D. Hoagland, of this vicinity, became ugly and 



messenger's descendants. 2G5 

was made a gelding. As a weight puller he had no equal in his 
day. His daughters became the dams of many noted joroducers 
and performers, and through the doubling of his blood and its 
predominating influence we have the famous General Knox and 
liis tribe. But few of his sons were kept as stallions; among 
tliem the best known is Hambletoniaii, 814, known as the Parris 
Horse and the sire of the stout campaigner, Joker, 2:22^. Ver- 
mont Hambletonian (known as the Noble or Harrington Horse) 
was one of his best and best-bred sons. He died in 1865, leaving 
a valuable progeny. 

Hambletonian (Jltdson's) was a brown horse and resembled 
liis sire very much in both size and form. He was foaled 1821 , got 
by Bishop's Hambletonian, son of Messenger; dam by Wells' 
Magnum Bonum. This Magnum Bonum family abounded in 
that region, and it was a very good one, whatever the blood may 
have been. This horse was bred by Judge Underbill, of Dorset, 
Vermont, and sold, 1329, to Dr. Nathan Judson, of Pawlet, Ver- 
mont. He was kept in that region till he died about 1841. His 
progeny Avere very numerous and valuable. 

Hambletoxian (Andbus') was a brown horse nearly sixteen 
hands high. He was a well formed and evenly balanced horse, 
all over, with an objectionable lack of bone just below the fore- 
knee. His head and ear were strongly after the Messenger 
model. I have never been able to determine just who bred him, 
and consequently his blood on the side of the dam is not fully 
established. He was foaled about 1840, got by Judson 's Hamble- 
tonian, and out of a mare which Mr. B. B. Sherman says was by 
old Magnum Bonum. He seems to have known this mare well 
and speaks of her as a very superior animal. This would indi- 
cate inbreeding to the Magnum Bonums, and as they were a light- 
limbed family we may account for this horse's defects in that re- 
spect. He was owned a number of years by Mr. Andrus, of 
Pawlet, and passed into the hands of G. A. Austin, of Orwell, 
Vermont. In 1853-4 Mr. Austin sent him to Hlinois, along 
with Drury's Ethan Allen, Black Hawk Prophet, Morgan Tiger 
and some other stallions, in charge of Mr. Wetherbee, for sale. 
In 1854 they were removed to Muscatine, Iowa, and several of 
them sold there, among them the Andrus Horse. He was then stiff 
in his limbs, showing the effects of previous neglect and abuse. He 
died at Muscatine in 1857. His progeny there were defective in 
bone. I am told several of his daughters in Vermont have left 



266 THE HOKSE OF AMEEICA. 

good stock there and thus perpetuated his name in the second 
and third generations. But his chief title to fame has been 
secured to him by his renowned daughter Princess, the dam of 
the great Happy Medium. In 1851 Mr. L. B. Adams, who then 
owned her, bred the Isaiah Wilcox mare, by Burdick's Engineer, 
son of Engineer by Messenger, to Andrus' Hambletonian, and, 
in a nutshell, the union of this great-grandson of Messenger 
with this great-granddaughter of Messenger produced Princess. 
This pedigree of Princess is incontrovertibly established and will be 
given in fuller detail in the history of her son, Happy Medium. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 

'The greatest progenitor in Horse History — Mr. Kellogg's description, and com- 
ments tbereon — An analysis of Hambletonian, structurally considered — 
His carriage and action — As a three-year-old trotter — Details of his stud 
service — Statistics of the Hambletonian family — History and ancestry of 
his dam, the Charles Kent Mare — Her grandson. Green's Bashaw and his 
dam. 

Hambletonian", 10. — It has been a matter of constant regret 
that in the compilation of the first volume of the Register I at- 
tached the name "Rysdyk's" to this horse, and this misstep has 
served as a kind of apparent justification for very many men to 
seize upon the name "Hambletonian," with their own name as a 
prefix. This has led to great confusion and annoyance to all 
that body of men who have anything to do with records and cor- 
rect pedigrees. Fortunately, however, the evil has become so 
apparent that many writers are beginning to use the numbers, 
and we now very frequently hear men speak of "Hambletonian, 
10," as the true designation of this horse. 

As no horse of any blood or period in this or any other country 
has excited an interest so universal, or represented such a vast 
sum of money in his offspring and descendants, I must try to 
give an account of him and his family — ancestors and descend- 
ants — as full and accurate as the materials at hand will enable 
me. He was a beautiful bay color, bred by Jonas Seely, of Sugar 
Loaf, Orange County, New York, foaled 1849, got by Abdallah; 
dam the Kent Mare, by imported Bellfo under; grandam One 
Eye, by Hambletonian, son of Messenger; great-grandam Silver- 
tail, by imported Messenger; great-great-grandam Black Jin, 
breeding unknown. He was sold with his dam, when a suckling, 
to Mr. William M. Rysdyk, of Chester, in the same county, and 
he remained his till he died in March, 1876. He has been de- 
scribed by a great many writers, but the most minute and accu- 
rate description I have ever seen is from the pen of "Hark Com- 
.stock" (Peter C. Kellogg), which I will here present, and after it 



208 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

note any point upon "which my own judgment differs from his. 
It should be remembered that this description was made when 
the horse was breaking down with the weight of years: 

Hambletonian, now twenty-six years old, js a rich deep mahogany bay, with 
blacic legs, the black extending very high up on the arms and stifles. His 
mane was originally black, and in his younger days very ornamental; rather 
light, like that of the blood-horse, and of medium length, never reaching below 
the lower line of the neck, but uniform throughout. His foretop was always 
light. At the present time not a vestige of either remains, they having 
gradually disappeared until crest and crown are bald. His tail is long and 
full. When we first knew him it was very full, but is also thinning with his 
advancing years. The hair of both was black as a raven's wing, and entirely 
devoid of wave or curl. His marks are a very small star and two white ankles 
behind, but the coronets being dotted with black spots, the hoofs are mainly 
dark. Muzzle dark. Head large and bony, with profile inclining to the Roman 
order; jowl deep; jaws not as wide apart as in some of his descendants, yet not 
deficient. Eye very large and prominent, and countenance generally animated 
and expressive of good temper. We found him to measure lOJ^ inches across 
the face. Ear large, well set, and lively. Neck rather short and a little heavy 
at the throatlatch, but thin and clean at the crest. His shoulders are very 
oblique, deep andstrong; withers low and broad; sway very short, and coupling 
smooth. The great fillets of muscle running back along the spine give extraor- 
dinary width and strength to the loin, which threatens to lose the closely-set 
hip in the wealth of its embrace. But it is back of here that we find lodged 
the immense and powerful machinery that, imparted to his sons and daughters, 
has ever placed them in the foremost ranks of trotters. His hip is long and 
croup high, with great length from hip-point to hock. Thighs and stifles 
swelling with the sinewy muscle, which extends well down into his large, 
clean, bony hocks, hung near the ground. Below these tbe leg is broad, flat, 
and clean, with the tendtms well detached froui the bone, and drops at a con- 
siderable angle with the upper part of the limb, giving the well-bent ratlier 
than the straight hock. Pasterns long, but strong and elastic, and let into 
hoofs that are perfection. In front his limbs in strength and muscular develop- 
ment comport with the rear formation. His chest is broad and prominent; his 
forelegs stand wide apart (perliaps in part the result of much covering), and he 
is deep through the heart; yet notwithstanding this, and the fact of his round- 
ness of barrel, there is no appearence of heaviness or hampered action. 

Taken at a glance, the impressive features of the horse are his immense sub- 
stance, without a particle of coarseness or grossness. No horse we can recall 
has so great a volume of bone, with the same apparent firmness of texture and 
true blood-like quality. Though short-liacked, he is very long underneatb. 
Indeed, he is a horse of greater than apparent length. We found his measure- 
ment from breast to breeching, in a straight line, greater by four inches than 
his height at the withers — a very unusual excess. We also found him two 
inches higher over the rump than at the withers, and the whole rear, or 
propelling portion of the machinery, would upon measurement seem to have 
been molded for an animal two sizes larger than the one to which it is at- 



HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 269 

tacbed; yet so beautifully is its connection effected with the whole that there 
is no disproportion apparent, either in the symmetry or the action of the horse. 
As an evidence of the immense reach which this admirable rear construction 
enables him to obtain, it is often noticed by visitors that iu his favorite attitude, 
as he stands in his box, his off hind foot is thrown forward so far under him as 
to nearly touch the one in iront of it — an attitude which few horses of his pro- 
portionate lenj^th could take without an apparent strain, yet which he assumes 
at perfect repose. When led out upon the ground his walk strikes one as 
being different from that of any other horse. It cannot be described further 
than to say that it shows a true and admirable adjustment of parts, and a per- 
fect pliability and elasticity of mechanism that shows out through every 
movement. Many have noticed and endeavored to account in different ways 
for the peculiarity, some crediting it to the pliable pastern, others to surplus 
of knee and hock action, et •. • but the fact is, there seems to be a suppleness of 
the whole conformation that delights to express itself in every movement and 
action of the horse. " In his box," said a Kentucky horseman, who recently 
looked him over, " I thought him t(jo massive to be active, but the moment he 
stepped out I saw that he was all action." 

There is so much in the foregoing description that is intelli- 
gent and just that I hardly feel like reviewing a single phrase. 
In judging of the conformation of a horse and determiniug 
whether it is good or bad, at different points, we must have in 
our mind some ideal standard, by which we mentally compare 
one thing with another. The popular conception ot the perfect 
horse is the picture of the "Arabian," painted by artists who 
never saw an Arabian horse. The next approach to perfection is 
the Englisli race horse, but others may insist that the Clydesdale 
comes nearer perfection and that he should be the ideal with 
which the standard of comparison should be made. It is unfor- 
tunate that Mr. Kellogg should have described Hambletonian as 
possessing "immense substance, without a particle of coarseness, 
or grossness." He had a remarkably coarse head in its size and 
outline, but this is greatly softened by saying "with a profile 
inclining to the Eoman order." The ideal muzzle of the Eng- 
lish race horse is so fine that, figuratively speaking, he can drink 
out of a tin cup, but Hambletonian could not get his muzzle into 
^ vessel of much smaller dimensions than a half -bushel measure. 
"Ear large, well set and lively." This is true as to the size of 
the ears, but not correct, in my judgment, as to the setting on. 
As they habitually lopped backward when in repose, giving a 
sour and ill-tempered expression, I coi"'ld not concede that they 
were "well set." The hocks were good and clean, but the 
abrupt angle at that point was certainly a coarse feature. The 



370 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

round meaty withers and the round meaty buttocks were both 
"coarse and gross" when looked at from the point of good breed- 
ing. His two great, meaty ends, connected with a long and per- 
fect barrel, two or three sizes too small for the ends, showed such 
a marked disproportion that I often wondered at it. Not one of 
these criticisms is made in the sense of a criticism of Mr. Kel- 
logg's description, but merely as the expression of a different 
view on some points, and on those points not mentioned I most 
heartily agree with him. He has omitted to give the height of 
the horse for the reason that he had shrunken from his normal 
height just one inch. When at his best he measured fifteen 
hands one inch and a quarter. This shrinkage, in addition to 
the ordinary results of great age, is thus explained by Mr. Guy 
Miller, who knew him better than any other man except his; 
owner. "His splendid fore hoofs had been ruined by an opera- 
tion whereby the arch was lost and the horse during the remain- 
der of his days stood on his frogs." He was two inches higher 
on the hips than on the withers. 

When the horse was led out his movements were so friction- 
less and faultless that he impressed me as the most wonderful 
horse that I had ever seen. He seemed as supple as a cat with 
the power of an elephant. As he walked he kept pushing those 
crooked hind legs away under him in a manner that gave him a. 
motion peculiarly his own, and suggested the immense possibili- 
ties of his stride when opened out on a trot. Plain and indeed 
homely as he was he was a most interesting and instructive study 
whether in his box or taking his daily walks. The question has; 
been asked a thousand times whether the speed of Hambletonian 
had been developed and how fast he could go. This question 
I considered very important, in a philosophical and breeding' 
sense, and in starting in to investigate it I found two statements, 
one that the time made at the Union Course was honest and true, 
and the other that it was a "put up Job" to make Mr. Rysdyk 
feel good, and that the time in fact was much slower than that 
announced. Each side had its advocates, and it did not take 
long to discover that the enemies of Mr. Rysdyk were all on one 
side and the more bitter their enmity the more blatant they were 
in denying the truth of the time given out for the performance. 
This party was headed by one "J. M.," long distinguished, and 
will be long remembered in Orange County, for the virulence of 



HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 271 

his dislike to Mr. Eysdyk, and as the most unreliable of all unre^ 
liable horsemen. 

In the autumn of 1852 Mr. Rysdyk and Mr. Seely 0. Roe, the 
owner of Roe's Abdallah Chief, then four years old, concluded to 
exhibit their sons of Abdallah at the fair of the American Insti- 
tute, in New York, and after the fair to take their colts, three 
and four years old respectively, for a light training for a few 
weeks. The programme was carried out, and after reaching the 
course they started the two colts together, and much to Mr. 
Roe's surprise Hambletonian beat his colt in 3:03. In a short 
time Mr. Roe gave his colt another trial in 2:55-^. A few days 
later Mr. Rysdyk drove his colt in 2:48. Believing then he had 
the making of the best trotter in the world and being thoroughly 
homesick, he packed up his traps and started for Orange County, 
and this was the first and the last training that Hambletonian 
ever had. When we consider the age of the colt and how few 
of that age had then ever reached that mark, the little then 
known by amateurs of the arts of training and driving, and the 
very limited preparation, we must conclude that this was a re- 
markably good performance. 

Was it honestly made? Mr. Roe has been dead a good many 
years, but the next day after he returned from Long Island with 
Mr. Rysdyk he called at the house of his brother-in-law, David R. 
Eeagles, a very responsible man, and in the course of the conver- 
sation he asked Mr. Feagles if he had heard the news? "No," 
said Mr. Feagles, "what is it?" "Rysdyk's colt trotted the 
Union Course in 2:48. I held my watch and I know it is true." 
Mr. Roe was always steadfast and immovable in this declaration 
while he lived. Mr. W. H. Wood, the breeder of Abdallah Chief, 
says he told him the time was 2:48, and he had several times 
heard it disputed in Mr. Roe's presence and he had always settled 
the dispute by giving the same fact. Mr. David R. Seely said 
he could not remember the time made, but he had heard the 
matter disputed, and Mr. Roe settled it by saying it was true, that 
he saw it and held the watch on him when he did it. These men 
were as reliable as any in Orange County and their statement of 
Mr. Roe's assertions cannot be doubted. Considering the cir- 
cumstances, it will occur to any mind that Mr. Roe was the very 
best witness to the truth of this performance that could be pro- 
duced. He was not only disinterested, but in building up the 
reputation of a rival stallion he was testifying to his own hurt. 



272 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

There are other evidences of Htimbletoniau's development and 
sj)eed^ but nothing so definite as the foregoing. He was driven 
in double team sometimes with the great trotter Sir Walter. Mr. 
Kinner, at one time owner of Sir Walter and other good ones, a 
horseman of experience and knowledge of trotting afEairs, assured 
me that Sir Walter had shown a trial at Centerville track to 
wagon in 2:32, and this was before he was- driven double, occa- 
sionally, with Hambletonian; and that Hambletonian could out- 
foot Sir AV alter for the first half-mile, but as the young horse 
was green and unseasoned, he could not keep up the clip to the 
finish. He did not hesitate to express the belief that the team 
could have trotted the mile in considerably less than 2:40. There 
is one fact in connection with the trial at Union Course that I 
have omitted in its proper place. Mr. Rysdyk was a remarkably 
careful man and always aimed to be inside of the truth rather 
than beyond it. He advertised his horse as having made the 
trial in 2:48^, as it is probable some of the watches gave that as 
the time, instead of 2:48 flat. 

Like all the Abdallah family, Hambletonian matured early, and 
at three years was as well advanced as many colts a year older. 
His stud services commenced early. When two years old he was 
allowed to cover four mares without fee and he got three colts, 
one of which was afterward known as the famous Alexander's 
Abdallah. AVhen three years old he was offered for public 
patronage at twenty-five dollars to insure, and he covered seven- 
teen mares and got thirteen colts. The next season, at the same 
price, he covered one hundred and one mares and got seventy- 
eight colts. The next season (1854), being then five years old,, 
the price was advanced to thirty-five dollars, and he covered 
eighty-eight mares, getting sixty-three foals. The price re- 
mained at thirty-five dollars till 1863, when it Avas advanced to 
seventy-five dollars. At which price he covered one hundred 
and fifty mares. The next season the price was advanced to one 
hundred dollars, and he covered two hundred and seventeen 
mares, getting one hundred and forty-eight foals. In 1865 the 
price was advanced to three hundred dollars and one hundred 
and ninety-three mares were covered. In 1866 the price was put 
at five hundred dollars and one hundred and five mares were 
covered. At this price his services remained ever afterward — 
one hundred dollars down and the remainder when the mare 
j)roved in foal. In 1867 he covered seventy-seven mares and got 



HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 273 

only forty-one foals. This large percentage of failure indicated 
beyond question that his procreative powers had been overtaxed 
and that there was a general letting down of his vital energies. 
In 1808 he was not allowed to cover any mares. In 18G9 he 
iigain manifested his usual vigor and he covered twenty-one 
mares, getting fourteen foals. In 1870 he covered twenty-two 
mares and got thirteen foals. From this time forward his pro- 
creative powers dwindled, and in 1875, I think, he got but two 
foals, and died the following March. 

It has been estimated that he got about one thousand three 
hundred foals, and for several years it was one of the amusing 
features of horse literature to see how many writers were able to 
demonstrate that as a progenitor of speed he was a failure. This 
item of one thousand three hundred foals was taken as the basis 
of computation, and then with the small number of forty trotters 
out of the one thousand three hundred, the percentage of trotters 
was very small. The next step was to find some unknown horse, 
generally a pacer, that had only two or three foals to his credit 
and one of them had made a record of 2:30, thus showing a much 
larger percentage than Hambletonian, and by that much he was a 
greater sire than Hambletonian. All this foolishness has now 
subsided in the face of the fact that the great mass of the trot- 
ters of to-day have more or less of his blood in their veins, and in 
a very short time that blood will abound in greater or less 
strength in every American trotter. The tables which here 
follows will make this fact evident to all who will study them. 

[Prefatory to these tables and to the other statistics concerning the present 
rank of the trotting families given in the pages following, an explanatory 
paragraph is in order so that they may not be misunderstood. (1) They are 
based on the tables given in the Year Book for 1896, and I regret to say that 
these tables are so emasculated, incomplete, unsatisfactory and in many cases 
contradictory one of the other that it is literally impossible to compile from 
them statistics that may be accepted as absolutely correct and letter perfect. 
However, as this work is not intended as one for statistical reference, the tables 
being approximately correct serve my purpose, which is merely to show rel- 
atively and with substantial accuracy the standing of the sires and families 
embraced to the close of 1896. (2) By the term " standard performers " is meant 
horses that have acquired trotting records of 2:30 or better, or pacing records of 
2:25 or better. The Year Book no longer gives a 2:30 pacing list, and it should 
be noted that pacers with records between 2:30 and 2:25 are not credited in 
these tables. (3) The tables are designed to show (a) the number of standard 
performers got by each sire named. (6) The number of his sons that are sires of 
standard performers, (c) The number of his daughters that are dams of 



274: 



THE HOESE OF AMEEICA. 



standard performers, (d) The number of standard performers produced by 
these sons and daughters, and finally, in the last column, the total number o ' 
standard performers produced in the two generations — i. e., by the sire himself ,^ 
and by his sons and daughters. The dates of foaling and death are important 
in considering the opportunities of the families embraced.] 

The first table following gives some idea of the supremacy of 
the Hambletonian family over all others. When we seek a rival 
to Hambletonian as a trotting progenitor we must do so among 
his sons; and by turning to the second table it will be noted that 
many of these outrank the founders of any and all the other 
great trotting families. 

FOUNDERS OP THE GREAT TROTTING FAMILIES. 



Name. 


1 

as 

V 


OS 


CO 

a 

o 

at 

3 


a 
c 
to 
bti 

'S 

d 

o 
Oh 

148 
47 
23 
22 

6 
15 

6 


CO 
t-i 

3 

3 

'5 

u 
Ph 

80 
77 
17 
18 
18 
4 
7 


Standard perform- 
ers produced by 
sons and daugh- 
ters. 


Total No. Standard 
performers in 
two generations. 


Hambletonian 


1849 
1858 
1844 
1849 
1858 
1849 
1853 


1876 
1880 
1862 
1876 
1865 
1864 
1874 


40 

60 

6 

6 

8 
4 
8 


1665 

211 

119 

118 

72 

70 

53 


1705 


Blue Bull 


271 


Mambrino Chief 


125 


Ethan Allen 


124 


Pilot Jr 


80 


George M. Patchen 


74 


Champion (807) 


61 







In this table Ethan Allen is given as the representative of his 
family in preference to his sire, Black Hawk, the real founder, 
for the reasons that he was a far greater horse, and makes a bet- 
ter showing than his sire, and further because he was a contem- 
porary of Hambletonian. For exactly the same reasons 
George M. Patchen is given as the representative progenitor of 
the Clay line. 

The next table demonstrates what the Hambletonian family has 
done in the second and third generations, and the relative stand- 
ing of the leading sub-families of the greatest trotting line. It 
embraces separately every sire that has to his own credit and tO' 
the credit of his sons and daughters an aggregate of fifty or more 
standard performers, twenty-three in all, while the totals to the 



HAMBLETOXIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 



275- 



credit of all the other sons of Hambletonian are grouped in the 
last line: 



FAMILIES OF HAMBI.ETONIAN'S SONS. 



Name. 


<v 




33 

2 
<H 

73 Hi 

a 
cd 


a 

be 

a 
'S 

3 

£ 


.3 

be 

o 

3 

1 


Standard perform- 
ers produced by 
sons and daugh- 
ters. 


Total No. standard 
performers in 
two generations. 


George Wilkes 

Electioneer 

Happy Medium 


1856 
1868 
1863 
1864 
1863 
1854 
1866 
1852 
1866 
1875 
1865 
1855 
1863 
1864 
1867 
1868 
1868 
1867 
1863 
1860 
1866 
1867 
1866 


1883 
1890 
1888 
1893 
1893 
1888 
1895 
1865 
1892 

189- 
1878 
1892 
1894 
189- 
1894 
189- 
189- 
1873 
1891 
1891 
189- 
189- 


83 
154 

92 

44 

53 

34 

71 
5 

45 

75 

23 

13 

14 

29 

31 

15 

28 

35 
8 

14 
23 
31 
16 

618 


94 

65 

51 

43 

44 

40 

26 

14 

25 

25 

24 

12 

20 

14 

13 

15 

17 

4 

9 

9 

9 

6 

9 

229 


81 
43 
47 
45 
42 
48 
54 
29 
19 
18 
41 
16 
44 
28 
13 
36 
16 
20 
14 
11 
14 
9 

15 
412 


1801 

493 

272 

248 

234 

221 

158 

199 

110 

74 

125 

112 

93 

76 

64 

74 

57 

39 

57 

49 

35 

20 

34 

980 


1884 
647 
364 
292 
286 
255 
229 




Harold ... 

Dictator 




Volunteer 




Strati 1 more 




Abdallah (15) 


204 


Aberdeen 


155 


Ei'bert 


149 


Messenger Duroc . , 


148 


Ed ward Everett 

Administrator 


125 
107 


Jay Gould 


105 


Victor Bismarck 


95 


Cuyler s 


89 


Masterlode 


85 


Sweepstakes 


74 


Sentinel 


65 


Middletown 


63 


Squire Talmage 


58 


Dauntless 


51 


Ecbo 

Other sons (135) 


50 
1600 













This table shows what each horse himself produced, and how 
his blood is breeding on through his sons and daughters; and 
above all it demonstrates the stupendous fact that in three gen- 
erations the Hambletonian family has produced upward of seven 
thousand standard performers, and all facts and all experience 
now beyond cavil justify what I ventured to declare in Wallace's 
Monthly many years ago: "The Hambletonian line stands above 
all other lines and must survive because it is the fittest." 

The Charles Kent Mare, dam of Hambletonian, was a bay, 
fifteen and three-quarter hands high, with a star, left forward 
ankle roan, and left hind foot white. Her son was long and 
round, just the opposite of her sire. Hips rather coarse, and might 



27G THE HORtJJG OF AMERICA. 

be considered a little ragged. Stifles very powerful and well- 
developed. Her hocks and legs were exactly represented in her 
son Hambletonian. Her neck was fine and bloodlike, but not 
long. Her head was good, and her eyes remarkably full and 
bright, showing considerable white. Her mane was long, but 
thin, and her tail was light. Her shoulders were well-sloped, 
her withers ran up high, and were thin. Jonas Seely, St., hav- 
ing given the old mare One Eye to his son Charles, she was sold 
to Josiah S. Jackson, of Oxford, Orange County. Mr. Jackson 
bred her to Bellfounder and the produce was the Kent mare. 
Although the Seely family owned the stock, originally and after- 
ward, Mr. Jackson was really the breeder of this mare. Mr. 
Jonas Seely says she was got the year Bellfounder stood at 
Poughkeepsie (1831), but Mr. Kysdyk says she was got in 1832, 
when Bellfounder stood at Washingtonville. Mr. Jackson sold 
her at three years old to Peter Seely for tbree hundred dollars; 
Mr. Seely sold her soon after to Mr. Pray, of New York, for 
four hundred dollars; Mr. Pray sold her to William Chivis for 
five hundred dollars; and Mr. Chivis sold her to a gentleman, 
who was a banker in New York — name not remembered — to 
match another as a fast road team. This team ran away after a 
time, and she was injured, and became lame. Charles Kent, a 
butcher in New York, then bought her and bred her to Webber's 
Tom Thumb, before he came to Orange County. At this junc- 
ture, on the earnest recommendation of Mr. Pray, who had 
tested the quality of three or four of the family, Mr. Jonas Seely 
— Jonas, second — bought the mare of Kent for one hundred and 
thirty-five dollars, and took her back to the old place, where she 
was bred and produced as follows: 

1843. Brown filly Belle, by Webber's Toin Thumb. 

1845. Black gelding, by Webber's Tom Thumb. 

1846. Chestnut filly (died at 4 years old), by Abdallah. 

1848. Brown filly (died at 4 years old), by Abdallah. 

1849. Bay colt Hambletonian, by Abdallah (mare and colt sold to William 

M. Kysdyk, for $125). 

1850. Brown filly (went to Maryland), by Young Patriot. 

1851. Lost foal, by L. I. Black Hawk. 

1853. Brown colt Tippoo Saib, by Brook's Black Hawk. 

1853. Chestnut colt (died young), by Fiddler. 

1856. Bfown gelding, by Plato. 

1859. Bay colt, by Almack, son of Hambletonian. 



HAMBLETONIA]sr AND HIS FAMILY. 277 

In the preceding list there are but two fillies that lived to produce 
anything, and one of them is lost from sight. The produce of 
the first will be given below. The Patriot filly that went to 
Maryland was a brown, and of good size, but nothing further is 
known of her. 

The Tom Thumb gelding of 1845 was in 1869 a good road 
horse, and was owned by George S. Conklin. He was showy and 
stylish without very much speed. Her fifth foal, Hambletonian, 
is known wherever the trotting horse is known. 

This mare was a trotter of no ordinary merit. She was never 
in any races, so far as known, except they might have been of a 
private nature, but after she passed into the hands of Peter 
Seely her speed was pretty well developed. This is not only 
shown by the advance in her price from owner to owner, but it 
appears to be a well-established fact that when four years old 
Peter Seely had her at the Union Course, and he there gave her 
two trials to saddle, the first in 2:43 and the second in 2:41. 
For a time I was skeptical about these trials, but they seem to be 
beyond question. This is considerably faster than any other of 
the get of imported Bellfounder ever trotted in this country, 
and from this we may conclude that her inheritance from her 
dam was the great factor in her speed. 

OxE Eye, the dam of the Kent mare, was a brown, about 
fifteen hands and an inch high, with two white feet and perhaps 
a little white in her face. With the taste Mr. Seely had of the 
Messenger blood in Silvertail he wanted more of it; and when 
Townsend Cock sent the famous Bishop's Hambletonian to 
Goshen in 1814, Mr. Seely bred his daughter of Messenger to 
this son of Messenger and the produce was One Eye. I do not 
learn that this mare was handsome, but she was an animal of 
most remarkable courage and endurance. The load was never 
too heavy nor the road too long. Withal, she had a will of her 
own and was a little hard to manage unless she was worked con- 
stantly. One day when on her mettle she got an eye knocked 
out by accident, and, hence, her name; but the great quality of 
this mare was her remarkable trotting action. Those familiar 
with her gait, and entirely competent to judge, are enthusiastic 
in the opinion that no trotter of the present day ever surpassed 
her in a grand open trotting step. If the patience and sicill 
brought into use in developing the modern trotter had been ex- 
pended on her, she doubtless would have surpassed all of her 



:278 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

day, not even excepting her near relation, old Topgallant. This 
mare illustrates a point of very great importance. She was got 
by a son of Messenger that was a running horse of merit and able 
to beat some of the best of his day, and her dam was a daughter 
of Messenger. The trotting action of neither sire nor dam had 
ever been developed, but when these two Messengers came to- 
gether, the clean, open, unmistakable trotting gait was the result. 
Eight at this point and in this mare. One Eye, we have the in- 
cii)ient cause of all Hambletonian's greatness. This mare was 
bred by Jonas Seely, Sr. ; given to his son Charles, who sold her 
to his brother-in-law, Josiah Jackson, of Oxford in Orange 
County. According the recollection of Mr. Rysdyk, who was 
entirely familiar with the Seely family and their affairs, she pro- 
duced as follows: 

1829. Bay gelding Crabstick, by Seagull. 

1830. Bay gelding Pray Colt, by Seagull. 

1831. Bay filly Young One Eye, by Edmund Seely'.s horse Orphan Boy, 

1833. Bay filly Kent Mare, by imp. Bellfounder. Sold to Mr. Pray. 

1834. Bay filly; sold also to Mr. Pray, by imp. Bellfounder. Perhaps there 

was another foal that died. 

The first of her foals, Crabstick, appears to have been well- 
named. His temper was anything but smooth and pleasant. He 
was sold early to Mr. Ebenezer Pray, of New York, and he soon 
evinced two traits of character that did not elevate him in the 
estimation of his owner. He would throw every one off that 
dared to mount him, and when they did get him under motion 
he was determined to pace and not trot. On a certain occasion 
Mr. Eysdyk visited Mr. Pray, and he was urged to try his skill 
in riding Crabstick and see if he could make him trot. The at- 
tempt was long-continued, and embraced up hill, down hill, and 
level work, but all to no purpose, as pace he would. At last Mr. 
Pray proposed to put him over rails and stakes, placed on the 
road at intervals of a good trotting stride, and see if that would 
make him quit moving one side at a time. Mr. Rysdyk went up 
the road and got under good headway, but just before he reached 
the rails the horse threw him. He was not much hurt, mounted 
again, and then commenced in earnest the fight for the mastery 
between the horse and his rider. The value of a neck was noth- 
ing when compared with the great question of who should con- 
quer. The next attempt was successful, and he went over the 
jails flying. The intervals between them were then extended, and 



HAMBLETOJS'IAX AND HIS FAMILY. 279 

he was kept at that most dangerous exercise till he would trot 
without rails, and until both horse and rider were completely 
exhausted. The horse was conquered, and although always 
Avillf ul and hard to manage, ever after, when called on to trot, he 
would do it. Mr. Pray sold him to Mr. Vanderbilt, and, al- 
though kept as a private driving horse, he was fast for his day, 
and could go in less than three minutes at any time. 

Her next foal was sold also to Mr. Pray when five years old, 
and was known as the Pray Colt. He was marked just as his 
brother Crabstick, and, like him, was somewhat vicious and hard 
to manage. 

The third foal. Young One Eye, was by Edmund Seely's horse 
Orphan Boy, whose pedigree is not now known. One of her eyes 
was knocked out by Peter Seely, accidentally, when breaking her, 
just as her dam had lost an eye. She passed out of the hands of 
the Seely family and her subsequent history is unknown. If this 
mare ever produced anything, her history and that of her de- 
scendants would be of great interest and value. 

The question at once suggests itself. Where did Crabstick get 
his pacing action? It could not have been from his sire, as he was 
a son of Duroc, so said, but it may have come from Seagull's 
dam, as we know nothing of her breeding; or it may have come 
from old Black Jin, the dam of Silvertail. If from neither of 
these we must then conclude it came from Messenger himself, or 
rather, through him from some of his pacing ancestors. It is 
altogether probable that the strong infusion of pacing blood in 
Messenger's veins was the real element that made him a trotting 
progenitor when every other imported English horse failed in 
that respect. 

Silvertail, the great-grandam of Hambletonian, was a dark 
brown mare with white hind feet and a white face. She had a 
great many white hairs in her tail and hence she was called 
Silvertail. She was foaled in 1802 and was bred by Mr. Jonas 
Seely, Sr., of Sugar Loaf, Orange County, New York. She was 
got by imported Messenger in 1801, the year he stood at Goshen, 
New York. Her dam was a great, slashing black mare called 
"Jin" that Mr. Seely had used in his business many years, but 
her origin and breeding cannot now be found. She must have been 
a real good one or Mr. Seely would not have taken her to Messen- 
ger. In the summer of 1806, as was his custom, he was down at 
3^ew York with a drove of cattle, and his son Jonas, then a lad of 



280 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

eight or ten years old, went along to help drive the cattle and 
to see the city. He was detained two or three days longer than he 
expected and it was very important that he should reach home at 
a certain time. On the morning of that day he found himself 
in Hoboken, with his son, and no means of getting home except 
on Silvertail. So he took the boy up behind him and went home 
that day, seventy-five miles, by sundown. She was fully sixteen 
hands high and of very fine style. Her head, neck and ear were 
bloodlike, and her resolution and will were remarkable even in 
old age. Her step, at the trot, is not known to have been much 
developed, but she could gallop all day long. On several occa- 
sions she carried her master to Albany in a day. Besides the 
famous One Eye she produced several superior foals that brought 
high prices, in those days, but we have only the one line tracing 
to her as a producer. She died the property of Ebenezer Seely. 
In searching for the particulars of this pedigree of Hamble- 
tonian and in tracing it back to old "Black Jin," I was neces- 
sarily brought into contact with a great many people, some of 
whom were helpful and some were not. As a matter of course 
I met with the usual number who professed to ''know it all," but 
really knew nothing that was reliable. As the whole tracing 
was in the Seely family, the public may wish to know what kind 
of people they were. Jonas Seely, first, of Oxford in Orange 
County, was a large farmer in the last century and an extensive 
cattle feeder and drover. As there were no railroads or steam 
boats in those days, much of his time was given to driving cattle, 
either in collecting them from the interior or in taking them to 
market in New York. He had use for good horses and he had a 
fancy for the best. His business brought him into contact with 
the butchers of New York, and we find he sold many of his horses 
as well as his cattle to them. These same business relations were 
continued under his successor. He left a large family of sons 
who seemed to take to the horse as a duck takes to water. 
Jonas, second, was one of his younger sons and succeeded to his 
father's business as well as to the homestead. He was born 1797 
at Oxford, and his father removed to the farm at Sugar Loaf 
when he was a child. He was a thrifty and successful farmer. 
For a number of years he was engaged with his partner and life- 
long friend, Ebenezer Pray, in buying and driving cattle from 
the West to the New York market. In June, 1882, he passed 
away and there ended an acquaintance and a friendship of nearly 



HAMBLETONIAN AND HIS FAMILY. -^81 

thirty years. He was a strictly conscientious and truthful man, 
.und died in the glorious hope of a devoted Christian. His first 
visit to New York, in 1806, the wonders he saw there, and es- 
pecially the total eclipse that occurred while he was there, and 
how he watched it from the Bull's Head tavern, through a piece 
of smoked glass, and the ride home the next day behind his 
father on Silvertail, and how he ran down many a hill to rest 
himself, and how tired he was when they reached home, are inci- 
■dents that were all detailed to me with the interest and vigor of 
yesterday. 

When One Eye was about fifteen years old the elder Jonas gave 
her or sold her to his son-in-law, Josiah Jackson, and in due 
time he bred her to imported Bellfounder and she produced the 
Charles Kent mare. Mr. Eysdyk thought the elder Jonas gave 
this mare to his son Charles and that Charles sold her to Mr. 
Jackson, which is not material. After the Kent mare had been 
battered about in New York for some years and finally crippled, 
•Charles Kent, a butcher, bought her and bred her to Webber's 
Tom Thumb, a Canadian horse that was quite a trotter. On 
one occasion when Jonas II. and Mr. Pray were down in the city, 
Kent wanted to sell the mare, and Mr. Pray urged Jonas very 
strongly to bay her and take her home for a brood mare. He 
•concluded to do so if she were not too badly crippled, and they 
together went over on to the island to see her, when she came 
^gain into the Seely family. In 1848 he bred her to Abdallah, 
in 1849 she produced a bay colt, and in the autumn of that year 
lie sold her with her colt to William M. Rysdyk, who had been 
employed on his farm for the year, for one hundred and twenty- 
five dollars, and this colt proved to be the great Hambletonian. 

As it is now conceded, not only in this country, but through- 
out the world, that Hambletonian, as a trotting progenitor, is far 
and away the greatest horse that has ever been produced, a care- 
ful and true analysis of the blood elements entering into his in- 
heritance is a most interesting and instructive lesson for all 
breeders. First we have the direct cross from Messenger himself 
in Silvertail; second, we have the cross from a son of Messenger 
on a daughter of Messenger in One Eye, making her equal to a 
daughter of Messenger in blood; third, we have the out- 
oross from Bellfounder, that was a total failure as a trotting pro- 
genitor, on this double granddaughter of Messenger, and the re- 
sult is a trotter in the Kent, mare and practically the only trotter 



5>82 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

that Bellfounder ever got; fourth, we have the cross of a grand- 
son and probably a double grandson of Messenger on this trotter, 
and the produce is Hambletonian himself. These crosses show 
a stronger concentration of Messenger blood than can be found 
in any horse of his generation. 

Bashaw (Green's). — This was a black horse, fifteen and a 
half hands high, bred by Jonas Seely, the breeder of Hamblp- 
tonian; foaled 1855, and given when following his dam to his son- 
in-law, Colonel F. M. Cummins, of Muscatine, Iowa. He was got 
by Vernol's Black Hawk, then known as the Drake colt, son of 
Long Island Black Hawk, and his dam was Belle, the first foal of 
the Charles Kent mare, that was out of One Eye. In the spring 
of 1857 he was sold to Joseph A. Green, of Muscatine, and he re- 
mained his till 1864. He had one white hind foot and a large, 
full star in his forehead. He was a smooth, handsome horse in 
every respect. His head, neck, ear and eye were all good, and 
free from coarseness. His back and loin had very few equals 
even among those that are called most perfect at these points. 
His hip was of great length, and in his buttock there was quite a- 
resemblance on a reduced scale to his kinsman, Hambletonian. 
His limbs and feet both in shape and quality were admirable, and 
his disposition docile and kindly. In walking his gait was sling 
ing, but loose jointed and slovenly, and he was therefore not a 
pleasant driving horse. But at the trot, whether going slow or 
fast, his style was very taking and his action remarkably perfect. 
While owned by Mr. Green he was handled by good, careful men, 
but they had no experience in developing and driving a trotter, 
and knew nothing about that kind of horsemanship. Under 
these, circumstances many a horse would have been spoiled, but 
his gait was always perfect and his popularity as a trotter never 
waned. He never was started in what might be called regular 
races, but at State fairs and the principal county fairs he was 
always in demand and always won. He was, perhaps, the best 
natural trotter that I have ever seen. He was able to show about 
2:28, but I think he never won a heat on a half-mile track in 
better than 2:31, and when sixteen years old he was able to win 
in 2:35. In 1864 Mr. Green sold him to some parties in St. 
Louis, Missouri, and they to Mr. Beckwith of Hartford, Con- 
necticut, and while in his hands he was matched against Young 
Morrill, but went amiss and paid forfeit. He made the season of 
1865 at Hartford. The following winter Mr. Green repurchased 



HAMBLETONIAN" AND HIS FAMILY. 285 

him and he was returned to Muscatine, where he remained till 
January, 1877, when he was sold to George A. Young, of Leland, 
Illinois, and died January, 1880. 

He left seventeen trotters in the 2:30 list; twenty-four sons 
that were the sires of fifty-nine standard performers, and thirty- 
four daughters that produced forty-four standard performers. As 
his sire never amounted to anything either as a trotter or a getter 
of trotters, it is fair to conclude that whatever merit he possessed 
was inherited from the same source that made Hambletonian 
greater than all others. 

Belle, the dam of Bashaw, 50, was a brown mare about 
fifteen and three-quarter hands high, with tan muzzle and fianks 
and some white feet. She was rather short in the body and 
neck, but she was very stoutly built and had been a fine road 
mare. She was bred by Charles Kent, the butcher, and I think 
was following her dam when Mr. Jonas Seely bought her. She 
was foaled 1843 and was got by Tom Thumb, a Canadian horse, 
and a trotter that was brought into Orange County by William 
Webber and left excellent stock. Her dam was the Charles Kent 
mare, the dam of Hambletonian. She produced as follows; 

1848. Bay gelding, by Abdallab. 

1849. Bay filly Seely Abdallab, by Abdallab. 

1851. Black colt Seely's Black Hawk, by Long Island Black Hawk. 
1853. Bay filly, (taken West) by Hambletonian. 
1855. Black colt Green's Bashaw, by Vernol's Black Hawk. 
1857. Bay filly by Black Hawk Prophet, son of Vermont Black Hawk, itt 
Iowa. This filly u as ringboned, and given away. 

Nothing is now known of the gelding by Abdallah. The filly 
of 1849 by Abdallah, called Seely Abdallah, was owned by Mr. 
Charles Backman, and he had her produce for two or three 
generations. 

The black colt by Long Island Black Hawk of 1851 was sold to 
Ebenezer Seely, and kept as a stallion. This Mr. Seely died in 
Chemung County, and the horse died there in the spring of 1859. 
The filly of 1853 by Hambletonian was one of a pair of Hamble- 
tonian fillies bought and taken to Iowa by Mr. Green in 1855^ 
They developed a very fine rate of speed. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 

Different opinions as to relative merits of Hambletonian's greater sons 
— George Willies, his history and pedigree — His performing de- 
scendants — History and description of Electioneer — His family — Alexander's 
Abdallah and liis two greatest sons, Almont and Belmont — Dictator — 
Harold — Happy Medium and his dam — Jay Gould — Strathmore — Egbert — 
Aberdeen — Masterlode — Sweepstakes — Governor Sprague, grandson of 
Hambletonian. 

There is hardly a prominent sire by Hambletonian that has 
not been claimed by his admirers to have been the "greatest son" 
of the most renowned of trotting progenitors, and if a poll of 
the horsemen of the country could be taken to-day as to what 
horse was the greatest son of Hambletonian, probably a dozen 
names would be found to have thousands of supporters each. As 
with all questions that are largely matters of opinion, and that 
cannot be decided absolutely by figures, the relative rank of 
horses as progenitors must always remain open to disputation 
according as thinkers approach the subject from different points 
of view and of interest. I shall not enter into any discussion as to 
the relative merits of the great sons of Hambletonian with a purpose 
to reach any deduction as to "which was or is the greatest; but 
shall refer the reader to the table given in the preceding chapter, 
and content myself with briefly giving the history of the more 
renowned sires of the Hambletonian line, with such statistics as 
may be necessary to gauge their rank as progenitors. 

George Wilkes was one of the first of Hambletonian's sons 
to attract attention, by his performances on the turf, to the 
value of his sire; and as a progenitor he must be accorded a place 
in the first rank of all trotting sires. This horse was bred by 
Colonel Harry Felter, Newburgh, New York, was foaled 1856, 
and was got by Hambletonian out of the fast road mare Dolly 
Spanker. (This mare was afterward registered on what seemed 




/ 



hambletontan's sons and geandsons. 385' 

excellent evidence as by Henry Clay, out of a daughter of Baker's 
Highlander, but more recent investigation has thrown serious 
doubt upon this pedigree, the subject being fully discussed in 
the chapters in this work on "The Investigation of Pedigrees.") 
After the travail that brought the little brown colt into the 
world, Dolly Spanker died, and the orphaned youngster, like 
Andrew Jackson, owed his life to woman's kindly care. He was. 
fed by the women of the farm on Jamaica rum and milk sweet- 
ened with sugar, and soon grew lusty, though he was always an 
undersized horse, never much, if any, exceeding fifteen hands in 
height, though he was so stoutly and compactly made that he 
gave the impression of being larger than he really was. He was 
of that order that has been paradoxically described as "a big 
little horse." In color he was a very dark brown, and his flanks 
and muzzle shaded into a deep tan, or wine color. From a de- 
tailed description of him published in the Spirit of the Times in 
1862, I extract the following: 

" He is about 15.1, but all horse. . . . His traveling gear is just what it 
should be — muscular shoulders long strong anus, flat legs, splendid quarters, 
great length from hip to hock, and very fine back sinews. He stand- higher 
behind than he does forward, a formation we like. . . . He is very wide 
between the jaws. . . . His coat is fine and glows like the rich dark tints 
of polished rosewood. . . . His temper i-i kind. We had the pleasure of 
seeina him at his work, and unless we are greatly mistaken he will make an 
amazingly good one. He has a long and easy way of going, striking well out 
behind and tucking his haunches well under him." 

Though from the fact that this writer stated that Wilkes "was 
as handsome as Ethan Allen," we might suspect him of a tendency 
to "paint the lily," it will be noted that this was written before 
the horse had any great reputation to speak of, and it may be 
accepted as a substantially correct description as far as it goes. 
In describing his action Charles J. Foster wrote that "his hind 
leg when straightened out in action as he went at his best pace re- 
minded me of that of a duck swimming." He was then the prop- 
erty of Z. E. Simmons, who had purchased him as a three-year- 
old for 13,000, and another horse. 

George Wilkes, or Robert Fillingham, as he was first named, 
was a trotter from colthood. At four years old he was matched 
against Guy Miller, but his party paid forfeit, the reason there- 
for being afterward alleged that they found Fillingham pos- 
sessed of so much speed that they decided to "lay for bigger 



286 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

game." The late Alden Goldsmith, a most competent judge, saw 
the colt trot at this time and then thought he was the fastest 
horse he had ever seen. He won a race in August of his five- 
year-old year, taking a record of 2:33, and the next year sprang 
into wide fame hy defeating the then popular idol, Ethan Allen, 
in straight heats, over the Union Course, the fastest heat being 
in 2:24f. In October of that year he started in harness against 
General Butler, under saddle. Though Butler was no match for 
George Wilkes in harness, with a saddle on his back, and Dan 
Mace in the saddle, he was almost unbeatable in his day, but it 
took him four heats to beat Wilkes, who forced him out in the 
first heat in 2:21^, a record he never after surpassed. Then 
William L. Simmons and John Morrissey matched Wilkes against 
Butler, two-mile heats to wagon, the latter having previously 
beaten the great George M. Patchen a heat in record-breaking 
time under similar conditions. In preparation for that match 
George Wilkes was sent a trial over the Centerville Course, con- 
cerning which there has been much discussion and probably 
much romance. Charles J. Foster wrote thus: 

" It was a close, sultry day and the stallion was short of work. . . . He 
went the two-mile trial and I have no doubt it was faster than trotter ever had 
before, or has since, in any rig. But it ' cooked his mutton,' as the saying is, 
and for a long time he was George Wilkes no more." 

It is said that ever after this trial, whatever it may have 
been, George Wilkes Vvas inclined to sulk in his races. He raced 
with fair success in 1863 and 1864, and at the beginning of 1865 
was classed among the very best out. He was sent against Dex- 
ter and Lady Thorn, being beaten by both; but in 1866 he twice 
defeated Lady Thorn, the last time in a notable wagon race over 
Union Course in 2:27, 2:25, 2:26f . Afterward in the same year Lady 
Thorn defeated Wilkes in four successive races, and she beat him 
again in their only meeting the following year, but in 1868 he 
defeated the mare in a hard-fought race, she winning the first 
and second heats and making the fourth heat dead. George 
Wilkes made his record of 2:22, October 13, 1868, over the Nar- 
ragansett Course at Providence in a winning race with Khode 
Island and Draco. He was kept on the turf with indifferent suc- 
cess until 1872, racing frequently against Lucy, Lady Thorn, 
and American Girl, all of whom outclassed him, at least in 
the afternoon of his racing career. Just how fast a trotter 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 287 

Oeorge Wilkes was it is impossible definitely to determine, 
so many and varying have been the representations on that 
point. It has been claimed that he went a quarter in 
twenty-nine seconds to an eighty-five pound wagon. William L. 
Simmons some years ago stated that of his own knowledge 
George Wilkes trotted a mile and repeat as a six-year-old at the 
•Centerville Course in 2:19^, 2:18^, and that Sam McLaughlin 
"drove him a half-mile to wagon over Union Course in 1:04^. 
These statements I give for what may be deemed their worth, 
contenting myself with the remark that it is safe to conclude 
that George AVilkes would have trotted well within the 2:20 mark, 
if he had been managed with a view to bringing out his highest 
racing capacity, instead of being handled solely for the purpose 
•of smart betting and match-making manipulations. 

George Wilkes was taken to Lexington, Kentucky, by William 
L. Simmons, his owner, in 1873, and in his declining years made 
a reputation so great in the stud that his brilliant turf career is 
almost forgotten. After having trotted against the best in the 
country for twelve successive years, proving his fitness in the 
fiery ordeal of turf contest, he, in the nine remaining years of his 
life, fulfilled the purpose of his being, and demonstrated the 
truth of heredity by getting trotters in plenty able to do and 
outdo what he had in his day done. 

George Wilkes got a few foals before going to Kentucky, of 
which the most notable was May Bird, 2:21, the first trotter to 
bring him reputation as a sire. Of the others got in the North, 
Young Wilkes, 2:28^, a sire of some reputation, and Wilkes 
Spirit, who also figures in the table of sires, are the only ones to 
earn places in the records. Early in the eighties George Wilkes 
began to assume high rank as a sire. May Bird, Kentucky Wilkes, 
Prospect Maid, So So, Joe Bunker and others bringing him into 
prominence. Every year added to his roll of honor and soon he 
was among the leaders. Blue Bull had surpassed Hambletonian 
in the number of trotters to his credit in the 2:30 list, but at the 
olose of 1886 George Wilkes was even with the Indiana sire, in 
1887 he passed him, and for some seasons led all sires of 2:30 
performers. George Wilkes got seventy-two trotters and eleven 
pacers to acquire standard records, of which the most noted were 
Harry Wilkes, 2:13i, Guy Wilkes, 2:15^, and Wilson, 2:16^; and 
ninety-four of his sons and eighty-one of his daughters have 
produced, as shown in the table of Hambletonian's sons, 1801 



288 



THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 



standard performers. The following table embraces the sons: 
of George Wilkes that have twenty or more standard performers- 
to their credit: 



LEADING SONS OP GEORGE WILKES. 



Name. 



RedWilke? 2:40 

Onward, 2:25i 

Alcantara, 2:23 

Bourbon Wilkes 

Si.nmons, 2:28 

Wilton, 2:19i 

JavBird. 2:31f 

Alcvone,2:27 

Guy Wilkes, 2:15i 

Anibassadc . 2:21J 

Gainbetta Wilkes, 2:26. 

Baron Wilkes, 2:18 

Adrian Wilkes 

Wilkes Boy, 2:24i 

Young Jim 

Brown Wilkes, 2:214. . . 
Young Wilkes, 2:28^... 
Favorite Wilkes, 2:24^. 

Woodford Wilkes 

Wilkie Collins 

Lumps, 2:21 

The King, 2:29i 

Jersey Wilkes . . 



1874 
1875 
1876 
1875 
1879 
1880 
1878 
1877 
1879 
1875 
1881 
1S82 
1878 
1880 
1874 
1876 
1868 
1877 
1882 
1876 
1875 
1874 
1881 



xn 



127 
120 
98 
67 
64 
61 
57 
55 
52 
48 
48 
47 
38 
37 
37 
32 
29 
23 
23 
21 
20 
20 
20 



62 

64 

29 

14 

13 

3 

10 

27 

10 

8 

11 

6 

6 

2 

11 

5 

6 

7 

1 

5 

3 






41 

32 

15 

12 

6 

4 

10 

9 

5 

3 

6 

7 

7 

3 

19 

1 

3 

6 

4 

1 

10 



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394 


275 


395 


115 


213 


45 


112 


35 


99 


8 


69 


68 


125 


117 


172 


49 


101 


33 


81 


32 


80 


18 


65 


25 


63 


8 


45 


43 


80 


39 


71 


12 


41 


21 


44 


12 


35 


10 


31 


16 


36 


. . • 


20 


2 


22 



Among the other seventy -one producing sons of George Wilkes, 
that do not come within the scope of this table are many most- 
promising sires of rapidly growing prominence, and indeed this 
family is branching out wonderfully in every direction. This 
family is an emphatically improving one. \w extreme speed, in 
racing capacity, and in form the third Wilkes generation is better 
than either the second or first. Of trotters, such as Beuzetta, 
2:06f, Ralph Wilkes, 2:06|, Hulda, 2:08^, Allerton, 2:09^, the 
once sensational Axtell, 2:12, and many others of the first rank 
by sons of George Wilkes sustain this judgment. The pacing- 
instinct is rampant in the Wilkes blood, as is attested by the fact 
that twenty-five per cent, of the performing get of George Wilkes'' 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 289 

sons are pacers, and frequently pacers of extreme speed, includ- 
ing such as Joe Patchen, 2:03, and Rubenstein, 2:05, while John 
K.Gentry, 2:00|, Online, 2:04, and Frank Agan, 2:03, are by grand- 
sons of Wilkes. Like his sire, George Wilkes got many sons 
greater than himself — and after all that is the true test of great- 
ness in a progenitor. 

Electioneer has for some years led, far and away, all sires 
of trotters in the numbers" of performers to his credit in both 
the 2:20 list and 2:30 list, and is generally conceded to have had 
no equal as a producer of early speed — that is, of colts and fillies 
that trotted fast at tender ages. In many' respects this was the 
most remarkable horse of any age, for besides being phenomenally 
prolific in transmitting speed at the trot, and in getting early 
trotters, he possessed in a higher degree than any sire that has 
yet lived the ability to control running blood in the dam, and to 
impress his own instinct and action upon his progeny out of any 
and all kinds of mares. In speaking on his pet hobby of produc- 
ing trotters from thoroughbred running mares. Governor Stan- 
ford once said to me: "None of my stallions but Electioneer can 
do it;" and of all the hundreds of stallions that have been mated 
with thoroughbred mares in the hope of getting a trotter of ex- 
treme speed. Electioneer alone was able to do it. Palo Alto, 
2:08^, is so far faster than any other trotting horse out of a thor- 
oughbred dam — the one solitary instance on record of a half-bred 
trotter of extreme speed — that he is significant in one way, and 
one only, and that is as an evidence of the phenomenal pre- 
potency of the blood of his sire in controlling instinct and action. 

Electioneer was a dark bay horse, foaled May 2, 1868, bred by 
Charles Backman, at his Stonyford Stud, Orange County, New 
York. He was got by Hambletonian, out of Green Mountain 
Maid, by Harry Clay, 2:29, grandam the fast trotting mare 
Shanghai Mary, pedigree not established, but in all probability a 
daughter of Iron's Cadmus, the sire of the famous old pacer aud 
brood mare Pocahontas, 2:17^. (In Chapter XXIX., on the 
investigation of pedigrees, the history of Shanghai Mary is fully 
given.) Green Mountain Maid, the dam of Electioneer, has been 
called by Mr. Backman, and with justice, ''the great mother of trot- 
ters." In all she bore sixteen foals, fourteen of which were by 
the not remarkable horse Messenger Duroc. Electioneer was 
her second foal and the only one by Hambletonian. Of the other 
fifteen, nine have records of 2:30 and better, another has a record 



290 THE HORSE OF AMEKICA. 

of 2:31, another, Paul, was a very fast road horse, and two died 
young. Of her four sons kept entire, Electioneer, Mansfield, 
Antonio, and Lancelot, all are sires of trotters, and her daughters 
already figure as producers. The figures would seem to point to 
the daughter of Shanghai Mary and Harry Clay, 2:29, as perhaps 
the most wonderful of all great trotting brood mares. She was a 
brown mare, barely fifteen hands high, with a star and white hind 
ankles, and was finely formed, with an exceptionally beautifully 
outlined and expressive head. She had very superior trotting 
action, the trot being her fastest natural gait. A writer who 
made a very close study of her history said, on this point, in Wal- 
lace's Monthly: 

" Her education was limited to a single lesson when three years old; but 
previously she bad been regularly developed on somewhat the same plan since 
adopted for early training at Palo Alto, and was probably one of the fastest 
trotters out of harness that ever lived." 

As a matter of fact Green Mountain Maid, while in no sense 
vicious, was so highly strung, wild and uncontrollable, that her 
training was abandoned with the "one lesson" referred to, and 
she never wore harness again. 

Green Mountain Maid was a money producer as well as a 
speed producer. Mr. Backman paid four hundred and fifty 
dollars for her when she was carrying her first foal, and the 
writer above quoted states that up to that date (1889) Mr. 
Backman had received sixty-eight thousand eight hundred 
and thirty dollars for such of her progeny as he had then 
sold. This remarkable mare died June 6, 1888, and a fit- 
ting monument marks her grave by the banks of the Walkill. 

At maturity Electioneer was of that shade of bay that many 
might call brown, and stood precisely fifteen and one-half hands 
at the wither and an inch higher measured at the quarter. Many 
of his get, notably Sunol, are pronouncedly higher behind than 
at the wither. In general conformation, Electioneer was a stout 
and muscular horse, standing on fairly short legs. His head was 
well proportioned, of fair size, and a model of intelligent beauty. 
The forehead was broad and brainy, the eyes large and softly 
expressive, and the profile regular, with just the faintest sugges- 
tion of concavity beneath the line of the eyes. Electioneer's 
neck was a trifle too short for elegance of proportion, but 
not gross. His shoulder was good, the barrel round, of good 



hambletonian's soxs axd gkandsons. 2dl 

depth find proportionate in length and well ribbed, and the 
coupling simply faultless. The quarters were marvelous, and 
Mr. Marvin did not overstate the case when he said they were 
the best he had ever seen on any stallion. They were the very 
incarnation of driving power, and recalled Herbert Kittredge's 
portrait of Hambletonian, except that there was nothing gross 
or meaty about the buttocks of Electioneer. They were the per- 
fection of muscular endowment and development. The arms 
and gaskins, like the quarters, were full with muscle laid on 
muscle, and the legs and feet were naturally excellent. In the 
last years of his life he went over on his knees a bit, but that was 
not strange considering his age, and the fact that he had seen 
considerable track work. Indeed as long as he was at all vigor- 
ous he was daily exercised on the track, and in view of his great 
success in the stud, this fact has a special significance. 

As a three-year-old Electioneer was worked some on the Stony- 
ford farm track to wagon, and Mr. Backman, whose word is good 
enough authority for all who know him, stated that he showed a 
<iuarter to wagon in thirty-nine seconds in that year. Little 
else is known of his history at Stonyford. He was bred to a few, 
very few mares, and was evidently not greatly esteemed by Mr. 
Backman. In the autumn of 1876, ex-Governor Stanford, who 
Avas just establishing his great breeding farm, Palo Alto, in the 
Santa Clara Valley, California, visited Stonyford to i)urchase 
stock — principally brood mares. The governor was a great be- 
liever in what I may call horse-physiognomy, or to be more exact, 
he believed in the importance of the right psychical organization, 
what we commonly call brain force, in horses, and was attracted 
by the physical evidences thereof as indicated in the head. Elec- 
tioneer pleased him in this regard, and in his general make-up, 
and when the governor's purchase was completed Electioneer 
went along, being put in at twelve thousand five hundred dollars. 
He with the other Stonyford purchases arrived at Palo Alto 
€hristmas Eve, 1876. 

Though Electioneer never took a record, he was emphatically 
a developed horse. I do not know whether he was ever driven a 
full mile or not — Mr. Marvin never drove him one — but it has 
been stated that one of the other trainers drove him a mile in 
time somewhere between 2:20 and 3:25. However they may be,' 
Mr. Marvin in his book settles the question as to his having been 
a fast, trained trotter. He says: 



293 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

" Electioneer is the most natural trotter I have ever seen. He has free, 
abundant action; it is a perfect rolling action both in front and behind, and he 
Las not the usual fault of the Hambletonians of going too vride behind. Certain 
writers have said that Electioneer could not trot, and have cited him us a 
stallion that was not a trotter yet got trotters. ... I have driven, beside 
Electioneer, aquarter in thirty-fiveseconds. . . . He did this, too, hitched to a 
one hundred and twenty-five-pound wagon, with a two hundred and twenty- 
pound man, and not a professional driver, either, in the seat. In this rig be 
could carry Occident right up to his clip, and could always keep right with 
him; and it was no trick for the famous St. Clair gelding to go a quarter 
in thirty-four seconds. Without preparation you could take Electioneer 
out any day and drive hiui an eighth of a mile at a 2:30 gait. He 
always had his speed with him. . . . That Electioneer could have beaten 
2:20 if given a regular preparation is with me a conviction about which no 
doubt exists." 

Mr. Marvin is a conservative and reliable man; he knew 
whereof he wrote, and his testimony must be accepted as conclu- 
sive both as to Electioneer's having been a naturally fast trotter, 
and as to his having had his speed developed. Undeveloped 
horses do not trot quarters in thirty-five seconds. 

When in 1880 Fred Crocker, one of the seven foals got by 
Electioneer in his first year's service in California, astonished 
the world by trotting to a two-year-old record of 2:25|, his sire 
became instantly famous, and that fame has increased rapidly and 
steadily from that day to this. It was not allowed for a moment 
to wane or lag. After Fred Crocker came an ever-surprising 
procession of young record breakers. In 1881 Hinda Rose made 
a yearling record of 3:36^, and Wildflower a two-year-old record 
of 2:21. In 1883 Hinda Rose lowered tlie three-year-old record 
to 2:19|^, and Bonita the four-year-old record to 2:18f. In 1886 
Manzanita lowered the four-year-old record to 2:16; in 1887 
Norlaine, granddaughter of Electioneer, lowered the yearling 
record to 2:31-|; and in 1888 Sunol put the two-year-old record 
at 2:18, and the year following took a three-year-old record of 
2:10^, the fastest to that date. Sunol captured the four-year-old 
record in 1889, and the world's record, 2:08^, in 1891, but what 
made this the brightest year in all the history of Palo Alto was 
that Arion lowered the two-year-old record to 2:10| — .the most 
remarkable of all trotting performances — Bell Bird the yearling 
record to 2:26|, and Palo Alto the stallion record to 2:08|. Elec- 
tioneer has now to his credit one hundred and fifty-four 
standard performers, and in this and in the 2:20 list he has 
a lono; lead over all other sires. He died at Palo Alto, December 



HAMBLETONIAN S SONS AND GRANDSONS. 



293 



3, 1890, and I am informed that his skeleton has been articulated 
and mounted for the museum of the Stanford University. The 
following table gives the sons of Electioneer that up to the close 
of 1896 had ten or more standard performers to their credit: 



LEADING SONS OF ELECTION EEK. 



Name. 



Saint Bell, 2:24i.. 

Sphinx, 2:20* 

Chimes, 2;30|. . . . 

Anteeo, 2:16i 

Norval, 2:14| 

Egotist, 2:22i 

Anteros ... 

Elector (3170), 2:31, 
Albert W., 2:20. . . 

Eros, 2:29i 

Antevolo, 2:194- 

♦Bell Boy, 2:19^... 

Fallis, 2:23 

Palo Alto, 2:08f . . . 



1 


03 

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Standard perform- 
ers produced by 
sons and daugh- 
ters. 


1882 
1883 
1884 
1879 
1882 
1885 
1882 
1879 
1878 
1879 
1881 
1885 
1878 
1882 


47 
43 
32 
28 
24 
18 
16 
16 
15 
14 
13 
11 
10' 
10 


1 


1 


3 
5 

1 
1 


"3' 
'2' 


3 
12 

1 
1 
2 


1 
3 

i 

1 


.... 


1 
4 
1 
1 
3 









2 ^ 

0i 



48 
43 
35 
40 
25 
19 
18 
16 
16 
18 
14 
12 
13 
10 



* Died at 5 years old. 

In considering this table it is necessary to remember that the 
Electioneer family dates from 1878, and that no family of any- 
thing approaching so late a date makes a showing that will bear 
comparison with this. In considering the rank of families 
this question of age is always vital. Electioneer's first crop of 
foals at Palo Alto — 1878 — numbered seven, and of these two 
are represented above, while another was the famous gelding 
Fred Crocker. The next numbered but twenty-one, and of 
these Eros, Elector, and Anteeo are in the table, and ten are 
in the 2:20 list. His third and fourth crops (1880 and 1881) 
numbered sixteen and twenty-three respectively, and the forty of 
1882 was the greatest number he ever got in one year. I am in- 
formed that in all Electioneer got less than four hundred foals at 
Palo Alto; and that, since the first one saw light in 1878 this 
family should in eighteen years make the showing it has with 
nearly fifty per cent, of its members in the 2:30 list, and four hun- 



294 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

dred and ninety-three of the second generation also there, is cer- 
tainly remarkable. Electioneer has to his credit in the 3:15 list 
the following trotters: Arion, 2:07|, Sunol,2:08i, Palo Alto, 2:08f, 
Helena, 2:12^, Bellefiower, 2:12|, Utility, 2:13, Quality, 2:131, 
Conductor, 2:14:j, and Nerval, 2:14f, an "extreme speed list '^ 
greater than to the credit of any other sire, while among the get 
of his sons are such trotters as Azote, 2:04f, Fantasy, 2:06, 
Little Albert, 2:10, Lyiine Bel, 2:10^, Copeland, 2:11^, Athanio, 
2:llf, Cobwebs, 2:12, etc., etc. Sixty-five of his sons have sired 
four hundred and thirty-seven performers, and forty-three of his 
daughters have produced fifty-six performers. With all these 
facts kept in view the study of the above table will prove interest- 
ing and instructive in forming an estimate of the merit of Elec- 
tioneer as a trotting progenitor. 

Alexander's Abdallah was the founder of one of the 
very greatest of the Hambletonian sub-families, and he stands in 
the records as a progenitor of the first rank. This was a stout 
bay horse, about fifteen and one-half hands high. Excepting a 
right white ankle he was a rich solid bay. The only reliable 
portrait in existence of this horse was a drawing by Herbert 
Kittredge, made from a photograph taken of Abdallah after he 
went to Kentucky. The picture of Abdallah published in this work 
is a faithful reproduction of the Kittredge portrait published in 
WaUaee\-i Montldy for March, 1881, and in the absence of any 
reliable detailed description of the horse this portrait must be 
taken as the best reflection we now have of his individuality. 
He was bred by Lewis J. Sutton, of Warwick, Orange County, 
New York, and was foaled 1852. Mr. Sutton had in 1851 a 
good road mare that he had got at Carl Young's roadhouse in 
Third Avenue, New York. This mare, Katy Darling, had been 
quite a trotter, and had, it was said, won a match race on Union 
Course. Her reputation as a trotter and her fine form caused 
Mr. Sutton to buy her when, as he describes it, "she was stand- 
ing on three legs," in the hope of getting a foal from her. He 
took her home in March, 1851, and in August bred her to 
Rysdyk's Hambletonian, then a two-year-old colt, and Septem- 
ber 22, 1852, she produced the subject of this sketch. Two years 
later Mr. Sutton sold Katy Darling to James W. Benedict, of 
Warwick, from whom she was purchased by Hezekiah Hoyt, who 
took her to Muscatine, Iowa, where she produced a chestnut colt 
that was gelded, by Hector, son of La Tourrett's Bellfounder. 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 295 

This gelding was her only foal other than Alexander's Abdallah, 
and Katy Darling died at Muscatine, the property of a Mr. 
Stewart. A search was long kept up for the pedigree of this 
mare, and for the full details of what is known of her history the 
reader is referred to the different volumes of Wallace's Monthly. 
The conclusion from all the evidence found is that she was prob- 
ably by a son of Andrew Jackson. 

As a foal by his dam's side Alexander's Abdallah attracted 
much favorable attention by his fine trotting action, and his per- 
sistency in cavorting around at that gait. Among those who 
took great delight in watching the little fellow trot was Mr; 
Hezekiah Hoyt, and when the youngster was seventeen months 
old Mr. Hoyt, acting for, or in partnership with, Major Edsall, 
bought the colt for five hundred dollars, a fine price at that time. 
Major Edsall kept him until he was seven years old, and I am 
under the impression that he won some local races during that 
time, when he was known as Edsall's Hambletonian. He was 
accorded a fairly liberal patronage in Orange County, and his 
progeny showed so well that Major Edsall sold him for three 
thousand dollars in 1859 to Joel F. Love and James Miller, of 
Cynthiana, Kentucky. The Hambletonian family was just then 
becoming popular, and the price paid indicates that this horse 
was already regarded by good judges as one of Hambletonian's 
best sons. That he was reganled, moreover, as quite a trotter is 
indicated by the fact that at the close of his second season in 
Kentucky — 18f)0 — Mr. Miller matched him against Albion, a 
competing stallion, for two hundred and fifty dollars a side. The 
affair caused quite a sensation at the time, the Cynthiana horsemen 
going in crowds to Lexington to back Abdallah. The latter was 
driven by -"Jim" Monroe, and Albion by Warren Peabody, and 
Abdallah won in the hollowest fashion, distancing Albion in 2:4G. 
As youngsters Abdallah's first progeny in Kentucky showed very 
well, and in the spring of 18G3 he Avas purchased by R. A. 
Alexander, and made the seasons of 1863 and 1864 at Woodburn. 
On the evening of February 2, 1865, Marion's band of Confed- 
erate guerrillas raided Woodburn and took away a number of 
horses, among them Alexander's Abdallah and the then famous 
young trotter. Bay Chief, by Mambrino Chief. Marion mounted 
Bay Chief and, crossing the Kentucky River, the band encamped 
on the farm of a Mr. Bush, in a rough, hilly region, twelve miles 
from Woodburn. Here the next morning the Federal cavalry. 



296 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

that were sent in pursuit after the raid, came np with the raiders, 
and after a sharp fight routed them. Marion, on Bay Chief, was 
a conspicuous mark for Federal bullets during the skirmish. 
Early in the fray Bay Chief was shot through the muzzle, 
through both thighs, and one hock. In this condition he carried 
his rider two miles in the retreat, when the horse was so weak- 
ened by loss of blood that a Federal cavalryman overtook them. 
His piece being empty, the soldier aimed a blow at Marion, but 
missing him, lost his balance, and fell from his horse. The 
guerrilla leader quickly saw his opportunity, jumped from Bay 
Cliief, mounted the soldier's horse, and escaped. Bay Chief 
died about ten days later, despite all efforts made to save him. 
Meanwhile, Alexander's Abdallah had been found, safe and 
sound, by a Federal soldier in Mr. Bush's stable. The soldier 
refused to give him up to Mr. Alexander's men, and declared 
he would send him North and keep him until he got a large re- 
ward for his return. The horse was barefooted and in no condi- 
tion for hard usage. And so they rode him off, and after going 
some forty or fifty miles he gave out, and they turned him loose 
on the road. He was found next day in a pitiable condition by 
the roadside, and brought back as far as Lawrenceburg on his way 
home, where he was taken with pneumonia and died a few days 
later. 

Just how great a loss this was to the trotting breed was not 
realized until long after — until in fact Goldsmith Maid had con- 
quered all before her, and made a record as a campaigner never 
equaled, and until his two great sons, Almont and Belmont, 
rose to pre-eminent places in the list of great sires. Other sons 
of this remarkable progenitor have taken rank as sires, and his 
daughters proved of the highest excellence as brood mares; but 
Almont and Belmont have each established such large, impor- 
tant, and popular sub-families that this work would be incomplete 
without some brief sketch of each. 

Alexander's Abdallah got Goldsmith Maid, 2:14, Rosalind,2:21f, 
Thorndale, 2:22^, Major Edsall, 2:29, and St. Elmo, 2:30. Four- 
teen of his sons have produced one hundred and fifty-five stand- 
ard performers, and twenty-nine of his daughters have produced 
forty-four standard performers, among them being the noted 
campaigners, Favonia, 2:15, and Jerome Eddy, 2:1G|, the latter 
also a successful sire. The following table gives the families of 
his most prominent sons: 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 



297 



LEADING SONS OP AI.EXANDER'S ABDALLAH. 









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Almont, 2 -391 


1864 
1864 

1858 
1859 


1884 
1889 

1885 
1886 


37 

58 

24 

3 


95 
63 

12 
6 


72 

48 

13 

3 


609 

560 

49 

87 


646 


Belmont 


618 


Hauibletonian (Wood's) 


73 


Major Ed sal 1,2 139 


90 


Thorndale 2-22^ 


1865 
1861 


1894 
1882 


10 

8 


8 
5 


14 
17 


47 
38 


57 


Jim Munro 


46 


Abdallah Pilot 


1865 


1881 


3 


1 


1 


17 


20 







Almont was bred. at Woodburn Farm, was foaled 1864, and was 
by Alexander's Abdallah out of Sally Anderson, by Mambrino 
Chief; grandam Kate, a wonderfully fast pacer by Pilot Jr. 
Colonel E. P. Pepper informed me that he kneAv Kate as well as 
any of his own horses, and that her speed at the pace was "sim- 
ply terrific.'' Kate, whose dam was called the Pope mare, pedi- 
gree unknown, had several foals, among them the "catch filly" 
that was the dam of Clay Pilot, sire of The Moor, that got the 
great brood mare Beautiful Bells, 2:29^, and Sultan, 2:24, the sire 
of the world-famous Stamboul, 2:07-j. Thus the blood of this 
pacing Pilot Jr. mare figures in three great sub-families, the 
Almont family, the Beautiful Bells family, and the Sultan family. 
Almont was a beautiful cherry bay, very rich in shade, and with- 
out any white Avhatever. He was fifteen hands two and one- 
quarter inches high at the wither, somewhat higher behind, and 
stoutly and symmetrically made all over. He could not be called 
a handsome or highly finished horse, but he was emphatically a 
well-made one. He had very excellent feet and legs, and these 
he reproduced with great uniformity, as well as his very intelli- 
gent and even disposition. He was trained early at Woodburn, 
and, like his sire, started but once and distanced his competitor 
in 2:39f, this being in his four-year-old form. He soon after 
showed 2:32 over the slow Woodburn track, and was sold to the 
late Colonel Eichard West for eight thousand dollars and put in 
the stud. In 1874 the late General W. T. W^ithers, Lexington, 
Kentucky, bought him for fifteen thousand dollars, and a half 



298 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

dozen of years later he was very generally regarded as the greatest 
of living sires, and his prestige made the name of Fairlawn Farm 
of world-wide renown, and made his owner rich. The fact that 
ninety-five of his sons have sired standard performers, a greater 
number of producing sons than is to the credit of any other 
horse, Hambletonian alone excepted, indicates the high rank 
Almont must be accorded as a progenitor. In considering his 
success it is well for breeders particularly to note that good 
judges considered Almont capable of showing a 2:20 gait any 
day, and that, like Electioneer, he always was daily given regu- 
lar and ample track exercise. His gait has been described as bold 
and open, without an excess of knee action, but with immense 
display of power behind. Almont died of spasmodic colic, July 4, 
1884, in the fullness of his fame, and at an age when, had he been 
more discreetly used in the stud, he should have been at his 
prime as a stock horse. 

Almont was hardly a sensational horse in his day, the perform- 
ance of Westmont at Chicago in 1884, when he paced a mile with 
running mate in 2:01f, being the one sensational performance to 
the credit of his progeny. This lightning streak of pacing speed 
that so often crops out in the Almont family can be readily 
accounted for by the student of breeding. As has been noted, his 
grandam Kate, by Pilot Jr., was a phenomenally fast pacer, and, 
as we have indicated, her blood proved potent in more than one 
line. In addition to this there was a strong tendency to pace 
among the progeny of Alexander's Abdallah. St. Elmo was first 
shown at fairs in Kentucky under saddle and as a pacer, and 
many others of Abdallah's get were known to naturally pace. 
When we reflect that in Almont this Alexander's Abdallah blood 
with its pacing predilection was united with the blood of the old 
lightning pacer, Kate, we need not be surprised at the great 
number of fast pacers that came from Almont and his sons. 
Belmont, too, has shown a tendency to get the pacing gait with 
great frequency, but not in such frequency or at such high rates 
as his son Nutwood. As there could not be traced any known 
pacing blood in Belmont's dam, and as the fact that Alexander's 
Abdallah transmitted an inclination to pace has been generally 
not known or ignored, some writers have been unable to under- 
stand why the Belmonts paced. He got pacers because he in- 
herited that capacity from his sire, and Nutwood got more and 
faster pacers than Belmont, because in him the pacing inclina- 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 



299 



tion inherited from Alexander's Abdallah was reinforced by the 
strong pacing inheritance of his dam. Miss Kussell, the grand- 
daughter of Old Pacing Pilot. 

As shown in the table of Alexander's Abdallah's sons, Almont 
got thirty-seven standard performers, ninety-live of his sons sired 
five hundred and three standard performers, and seventy-two of 
his daughters produced one hundred and six standard performers. 
His most successful sons are embraced in the following table: 



LEADING SONS OF ALMONT. 



Name. 



Almont Jr. (1829), 2:26. 

Altamont, 2:26f 

Atlantic, 2:21 

Piedmont, 2:17^ 

Almont Jr. (1764), 2:29 
King Almont, 2:21^... 

Pasacas, 2;43 

Almonarch, 2:24f . ... 

Allie Gaines 

Harbinger 

*Allie West, 2:25 

Abdallah Mambrino. . . 





k" 






^-i 




















C 'C 3 




c 




ra 


■*- a; 03 


-a 


C 


cc 


tL 


J i^ 


<D 




bD 


t>D5 


»"aT3 


03 


TJ <V 


a 




T3 o a 


at 
01 


a 

03 


o 

d 

2 


E 


bandar 
ers i)r 
sons a 
ters. 


r-l 


02 

44 


Oh 
7 


20 


n 


1872 


39 


1875 


39 


7 


1 


10 


1878 


24 


6 


12 


22 


1871 


19 


3 


8 


18 


1871 


19 


11 


11 


51 


1874 


14 




1 


1 


1870 


14. 


4 


6 


13 


1875 


13 


2 


3 


7 


1875 


12 


5 


8 


17 


1879 


10 


1 


2 


3 


1870 


7 


4 


10 


24 


1870 


13 


1 


11 


24 



o & 

a ^ 

ta." O 

r (D ID 

o w a 

<t-i 3 « 



83 
49 
46 
37 
70 
15 
27 
20 
29 
13 
31 
37 



Died at 6 years old. 



This line is Justly regarded with growing favor as one of our 
very best and most productive sub-families, and one that is 
breeding on excellently, generation after generation. 

Belmont was a bay horse of very superior form and finish, 
bred at Woodburn Farm, and foaled there in 1864. He was by 
Alexander's Abdallah, out of Belle (that also produced McCurdy's 
Hambletonian, 2:20^, and Bicara, the dam of Pancoast, 2:21|) by 
Mambrino Chief; gran dam Belle Lupe, by Brown's Bellfounder. 
Belmont and Almont Avere of the same age, and, perhaps because 
of his finer appearance, Belmont seems to have been the preferred 
one at Woodburn, and was retained while Almont was sold. 
Though Belmont was a successful horse and established a great 



300 



THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



family, no thinking man can contend that he was the equal of 
Almont as a sire, when all the circumstances are considered. 
Almont spent almost his entire stud career at Fairlawn^, where 
there never were five mares worthy in blood to be in a great trot- 
ting stud, where there were scores of mares of all kinds of poor 
and freakish pedigrees, even to "Arabs," and where none of the 
stock was ever trained, Belmont, on the other hand, was all his 
life at the head of the most famous, and, in his younger years, 
unquestionably the best collection of trotting brood mares in the 
world, and where a training department was always maintained. 
Eemembering these conditions, and contemplating the statistics 
of the two families, it is interesting to speculate as to how the 
records would stand had Belmont been at Fairlawn, and Almont 
at Woodburn. 

LEADma SONS OF BELMONT. 



Name. 



Nutwood, 2:18f 

King Rene, 2:30i 

Efjiuont 

Wedgewood, 2:19. . . 

Vat can, 2:29J 

Warlock 

Monaco 

Waterloo, 2:19^ 

Meander, 2:26i 

Manibritonian, 2:20^. 
Herscliell 



-2 
~3 

o 

tt 

a 

>-i 

1870 
1875 
187:} 
1871 
1879 
1880 
1878 
1882 
1879 
1883 
1883 


(-1 
a 

136 
35 
34 
31 
14 
12 
11 
10 
10 
10 
10 


w 

a 

o 

U2 

bo 

a 
■3 

3 

T3 

2 

PL, 

90 
17 
13 
12 


s 

-a 


Oh 


Standard perform- 
ers produced by 
sons and daugh- 
ters. 


69 

16 

11 

9 


432 
55 
38 
60 








1 
'3' 


4 
1 
1 


7 
1 
7 


















Z lb ID 

o w a 



568 
90 
72 
91 
14 
12 
18 
11 
17 
10 
10 



Belmont, besides having the advantage of excellent individual- 
ity was also a trotter of no mean speed. He was driven a mile 
over the working track at Woodburn in 2:28^, and was, there- 
fore, a quite well-developed trotter. He never appeared in 
public, and has, therefore, no public history. The most success 
ful of his sons has been Nutwood, whose dam was Miss Russell, 
the dam of Maud S. This horse was himself a fast trotter in his 
day, taking a record of 2:18f, and rose to great popularity and 
success in the stud. Daughters of Belmont, being nearly all out 



hamblktoxian's soxs axd gkandsons. 301 

of producing mares, are greatly and justly esteemed as brood 
mares. Belmont died at Woodburn November 15, 1889. Bel- 
mont got fifty-eight standard performers, sixty-three of his sons 
sired four hundred and eighty-nine standard performers, and 
forty-eight of his daughters produced seventy-one standard per- 
formers. The rank of his best sons is shown on the preceding 
page; all having ten or more in the list of standard performers 
being included in the table. 

Volunteer stands pre-eminent among trotting sires as the 
one horse against not one of whose get the epithet "quitter" 
was, as far as I am aware, ever hurled. He did not get speed 
with remarkable uniformity, nor did his progeny develop speed 
«arly or rapidly. They required persistent training, but when 
speed was developed in a Volunteer you had with it every other 
quality of a resolute, enduring race horse. They were hardy, 
rugged, good-limbed horses, and uniformly possessed stamina 
and resolution in the highest degree. Volunteer had the advan- 
tage of being owned by Alden Goldsmith, an ambitious and 
experienced horseman, and the father of two of the most success- 
ful trainers of our day. The Volunteers had, therefore, every 
advantage that training could give, and his rise to fame was 
largely due to Mr. Goldsmith's constantly developing and racing 
his progeny. 

In 1853 Mr. Joseph Hetzel, Florida, Orange County, New 
York, bred the bay mare Lady Patriot to Hambletonian, 10, and 
Volunte*^r was foaled May 1, 1854. This mare, Lady Patriot, 
was by a horse called Young Patriot, and out of Mr. Lewis 
Hulse's trotting mare, and that is all that is known of her pedi- 
gree. Her sire's pedigree is wholly unknown. She produced a 
numerous family, among them being Sentinel, 2:29f, and Green's 
Hambletonian, brothers of Volunteer, and of some rank as sires, 
and Marksman, by Thorndale, that is also in the table of sires, 
while her daughter Heroine, sister to Volunteer, produced 
Shawmut, 2:'26. 

Volunteer was a bay horse, with a little white around the left 
hind coronet, fifteen hands three inches at the wither, and six- 
teen hands measured at the coupling. He has been considered 
by many good judges to have been the handsomest of all the sons 
of Hambletonian. He was a horse of superb form and of great 
elegance of carriage. With sufficient of muscle and substance, 
he was built on graceful, finished lines, with a beautiful head 



302 THE HORSE OF AMEiaCA. 

loftily carried, a long and graceful neck, a body stout but finely 
molded, and all set off by a handsome mane and tail. His feet and 
legs were of superb quality, and despite his great age they were, 
it is said, without fault or blemish to the last. His temper and 
disposition were good, though he was very high-spirited, and in 
harness he was especially attractive. As a four-year-old Volun- 
teer was sold to Mr, E. C. Underhill, of Brooklyn, after he had 
won a premium at the Orange County fair. In April, 18G1, 
Mr. Underhill sent him to Tim T. Jackson, of Jamaica, Long 
Island, and in Wallace'' s Mo?Hhly for December, 1880, Mr. Jackson 
gave his experiences with Volunteer, making among others this 
specific statement: 

" I bad liim at Union Course one day, and met Mr. Alfred M. Tredwell 
there, and I got biin to bold tbat watcb on bim. Had bim in quite a beavy 
single-seated wagon, weighing probably one hundred and twenty-five or one 
liundred and thirty pounds. On the first trial be trotted in 2:33. I said to 
Mr. Tredwell tbat be could beat tbat, and he trotted the next mile in 2:'Sli." 

He had previously been trained by William Whelan, at 
Union Course. It was June 26, 1862, while he was in Jackson's 
hands, that Alden Goldsmith, in partnership with Edwin 
Thorne, purchased this horse, then called Hambletonian Jr., 
and he soon afterward became the sole property of Mr. Gold- 
smith. Mr. Rysdyk greatly resented his having been called 
Hambletonian Jr., and early regarded him as a possible rival 
of Hambletonian, and there was war from the start between 
the adherents of sire and son. The Civil War was just then at 
its height, and the patriotic and military spirit rampant, and Mr. 
Goldsmith aptly named his horse Volunteer. Mr. H. T. Helm, 
who wrote a very detailed history of Volunteer twenty years ago, 
credits him with having trotted in 2:36 to wagon at the Goshen 
Fair in the fall of 1862, beating Winfield, Grey Confidence and 
others. At Hartford, Connecticut, in August, 1867, he beat 
George M. Patchen Jr., in a single dash in 2:37. He Avas, like 
nearly all the other great sires, a developed trotter. 

It is said that his early stud opportunities were so limited that 
at ten years old he had but eighteen living foals. The first of 
his get entered the 2:30 list in 1871, but from that time on his 
list rapidly grew, and the great campaigners Gloster, Alley, 
Driver, Bodine, Huntress, the great three-miler, and finally St. 
Julien, 2:lli, then the fastest trotter in the world, so spread the 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 303 

fame of Volunteer that when his- sire died in 1876 he was re- 
garded as the greatest living sire of trotters. In 1882 Mr. K. S. 
Veech, probably the most intelligent breeder in all Kentucky, 
while on a visit to New York, telegraphed Mr. Goldsmith to 
know whether it was worth while for him to visit Walnut Grove, 
with a view to buying Volunteer, and Mr. Goldsmith's answer 
reveals the regard in which he held his horse. The pith of his 
admirably written letter was in this paragraph: 

" While there is no person that would be more welcome at the farm than 
yourself, if the only object of your visit would be the purchase of Volunteer, 
then your trip would not be a profitable or successful one, as no breeder in 
Kentucky has money enough to buy him. ... I have as high a regard 
for money as the most of men for the uses it may subserve, but there are cer- 
tain things which money cannot buy, as the Teacher of old taught Simon the 
Samaritan." 

And SO Volunteer remained at Walnut Grove, and ''lagged 
superfluous on the stage" long after his owner had passed away, 
and died December 13, 1888, at the extraordinary age of thirty- 
four years, seven months and twelve days. 

Volunteer sired thirty-four standard performers, and forty of 
his sons and forty-eight of his daughters produced an aggregate 
of two hundred and twenty-one standard performers. The most 
successful of his sons is the Michigan sire, Louis Napoleon, that 
was out of the Harry Clay mare, Hattie Wood, dam also of Victor 
Bismarck and Gazelle, 2:21. Louis Napoleon has twenty-seven 
in the standard list, and fourteen of his sons and twenty-two of 
his daughters are producers, his best son being Jerome Eddy, 
2:16^, sire of Fanny Wilcox, 2:10^, and twenty-seven other stand- 
ard performers. 

Dictator very early in his career attracted attention as the 
full brother to the famous Dexter, who was his senior by five 
years, and Avho was king of the trotting turf, and the most 
famous trotter in all the world just at the time Avhen Dictator 
was merging from colthood to maturity. Dictator had thus from 
the very start the advantage of splendid stud opportunities. He 
was bred by Jonathan Hawkins, of Walden, Orange County, New 
York, and was foaled in 18G3. He was got by Hambletonian out 
of the famous Clara, the dam of Dexter, 2:17^, Alma, 2:28f, 
Astoria, 2:29^, etc., by Seely's American Star; grandam the Mc- 
Kinstry mare, breeding unknown, but that produced Shark with 



304 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

a saddle record of 2:27f. Dictator was a seal-brown horse with 
a white rear ankle, and stood scant fifteen hands and one inch. 
He was made on a small but a fine model, and was, all in all, a 
handsome little horse, and most of his get partook of his fine 
quality of structure, though many were unsound. Shortly after 
Dexter made his dehut on the turf, Dictator was bought by Mr. 
Harrison Durkee, a wealthy New York gentleman who had an 
extensive stock farm at Flushing, Long Island. The colt was 
then but eleven months old and was left at the Hawkins farm 
until two years old. Then he was sent to Mr. Alden Goldsmith's 
place, at Washingtonville, to be broken, after which he was taken 
to Mr. Durkee 's farm. The colt was very fast, but the fame of 
Dexter was already wide, and, no great importance being at- 
tached to development of stallions in that day, he was considered 
of more value for breeding than for racing. He was worked 
considerably at Mr. Durkee's farm, and Colonel John W. Conley 
and H. C. Woodnut, who at different times had charge of him, 
have both declared that they knew him to be one of the fastest 
trotters of his day. In 1874 Colonel Richard West sold Almont 
to General Withers, and to fill his place leased Dictator in the 
autumn of 1875, and he made the seasons of 1876 and 1877 at 
Colonel West's Edgehill farm, Georgetown, Kentucky. Stand- 
ing at a higher fee than Almont or George Wilkes, he attracted 
little outside patronage, and he was returned to Long Island. It 
has been stated that when at Colonel West's, George Brasfield 
drove Dictator quarters as fast as thirty-four and one-half 
seconds. After his return to Flushing he sank from public 
notice until the appearance of Director as a great three-year-old 
in 1880. Then a couple of years later came the phenomenal 
Jay-Eye-See, and close after him Phallas, and with these three 
great trotters on the turf at once "the sire of Jay-Eye-See, 2:10, 
Phallas, 2:13|, and Director, 2:17," came again prominently before 
the public. In 1883 he was purchased by Major H. C. McDowell, 
and Messrs. David Bonner and A. A. Bonner, for a price that 
was said to have been twenty-five thousand dollars, and taken to 
Ashland farm at Lexington. Eventually he became the sole 
property of Major McDowell, and died May 25, 1893. 

Dictator did not get speed uniformly. He was what might be 
called a sporadic sire, but those of his get that raced at all raced 
well. By far his best son as a producer is Director, 2:17, that 
was out of Dolly by Mambrino Chief, and is the sire of sixteen 



hambletoxian's sons and grandsons. 305 

trotters and pacers with records in the 3:30 list, including the 
champion trotting stallion Directum, 3:05^, and the one-time 
champion pacing stallion, Direct, who after being practically 
crippled in trotting to a four-year-old record of 3:18^, carrying 
great weights to keep him at that gait, was allowed to go at his 
natural gait and paced in 3:05j, and is already a very successful 
sire. Phallas, 3:13f, of whom high hopes were entertained, and 
who had great opportunities, proved practically a failure in the 
stud, tliough his son Phallamont, out of an Almont mare, ranks 
with Direct as the best of Dictator's grandsons. Dictator got fifty 
standard performers, forty-four of his sons have produced one 
hundred and seventy-three standard performers, and forty-two of 
his daughters have produced sixty-one standard performers. 

Hakold became very famous when Maud S. became queen of 
the turf with the then marvelous record of 3:08f, a record that 
stood unequaled from 1885 till 1891. This horse was bred by 
Charles S. Dole, Crystal Lake, Illinois, by whom he was sold, in 
an exchange of horses, to Woodburn Farm, when he was a year- 
ling. He was foaled in 18G4, and his dam was Enchantress 
(the dam also of Black Maria and of Lakeland Abdallah), by 
Abdallah. It was long claimed that this mare's dam Avas a 
daughter of imported Bellfounder, but investigation exploded 
this claim. Harold was a bay horse, without marks, just fifteen 
hands high, stoutly made but very homely of form. He had a 
finely made head, but otherwise he was exceedingly plain, and 
when Maud S, came out the late Benjamin Bruce, in the Ken- 
tucky Live Stock Record, expressed wonder that "that little 
bench-legged stud" could have gotten such a mare. Harold's 
full brother, Lakeland Abdallah, was far superior to him in- 
dividually, but ranks with Hetzel's Hambletonian, the brother 
to Volunteer, and Kearsarge, by Volunteer out of Dexter's dams, 
in the fore front of the well-bred failures in trotting history. 
Largely from his individuality Harold was never, even when 
Maud S. was in the heyday of her renown, a popular horse, and 
the figures given by the Woodburn management say that in his 
entire career he was bred to but five hundred and ninety-four 
mares, or an average of about twenty-five for each of his twenty- 
three seasons. With the exception of Maud S., Harold got 
nothing of the first class, but in the second generation the family 
holds better rank in respect to extreme speed production. Beu • 
zetta, 3:06f, Early Bird, 3:10, The Conqueror, 3:13, and the great 



306 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

three-year-old Impetuous, 2:13, are out of daughters of Harold, 
while Kremlin, 2:07f, lo, 2:13-|, Eizpah, 2:13^, Eussellmont, 2:12|, 
and the great pacer Robert J., 2:01^, are among the produce of 
his sons, and the present queen of the trotting turf, Alix, 2:03f, 
is out of a daughter of Attorney, by Harold. Harold died at 
Woodburn, October 6, 1893. This horse never trotted in public, 
but he was worked some for speed at Woodburn. As a six-year- 
old he is said to have trotted the farm track in 2:40^, in which 
mile it is stated he "grabbed a quarter" and was not worked 
again. He is the sire of forty-four standard performers, forty- 
three of his sons have produced one hundred and eighty-one 
standard performers, and forty- five of his daughters have pro- 
duced sixty-seven standard performers. 

Happy Medium was bred by R. F. Galloway, of Sulferen, New 
York, and was foaled 1863. He was by Hambletonian, out of 
the famous old campaigner Princess, 2:30, that trotted ten miles 
in 29:10f and two miles in 5:02, and was the great rival of Flora 
Temple, 2:19f. Princess was a bay mare, foaled 1846, by Andrus' 
Hambletonian, son of Judson's Hambletonian, that was by 
Bishop's Hambletonian, son of imported Messenger; and her 
dam was the Wilcox mare, by Burdick's Engineer, son of Engi- 
neer, by imported Messenger. She campaigned from ocean to 
ocean, and her career is perhaps the most remarkable of the 
earlier trotting days. AVhen young she was mixed gaited, alter- 
nately pacing and trotting, and was put to work hauling logs. 
Then her owner traded her for a second-hand wagon, and finally 
she reached the hands of D. M. Gage, of Chicago. He put her 
into training, and she trotted some indifferent races as Topsy, 
was sold, and taken across the plains to California. Here in 
1858 she beat New York, taking her record of 2:30. Then she fell 
into the hands of the notorious "Jim" Eotf, and the next year 
was matched against the then crack trotter of California, Glencoe 
Chief, at ten miles to wagon. These were golden days on the 
coast, and this race was for the enormous stake of thirty-six thou- 
sand five hundred dollars. Princess won easily in 29:10f, but the 
Glencoe Chief party being dissatisfied, another race was trotted 
the next day at the same distance for five thousand dollars. 
Princess again winning. There was after this nothing on the 
coast to race with Princess, and Eoff brought her to New York 
to try conclusions with Flora Temple. Her first race with Flora 
was at three-mile heats at Eclipse Course, Long Island, Flora 



HAMBLETONIAN'S SOXS and GRANDSON'S. 307 

winning, but at two-mile heats a week later Princess won in 5:02, 
5:05. In their subsequent races Flora turned the tables, though 
in a stubborn contest at two-mile heats Princess forced the then 
queen of the turf to make the long unbeaten record of 4:50^. 
She was then retired from the turf, and after passhig through 
several hands became the property of R. F. Galloway, who in 
1862 bred her to Hambletonian. 

Happy Medium was a bay horse, with star, snip, and two white 
rear ankles, fifteen hands two inches in height, and was a shapely, 
attractive horse, with excellent legs and feet. Some critics have 
found fault that he was light barreled, and perhaps with some de- 
gree of reason, but as a Avhole he was structurally much above the 
average of his time. As a four-year-old he started at the Goshen 
Fair and won, taking a record of 2:54, which he lowered to 2:51 in 
1868. The next year, 1869, at Paterson, ISTew Jersey, he distanced 
Guy Miller and Honesty in 2:34^, 2:32^, and these three perform- 
ances, all winning ones, comprise his entire turf career. He was 
in 1871 purchased at a very large price — said to have been twenty- 
five thousand dollars — by Mr. Robert Steel, who placed him at 
the head of his Cedar Park Farm, at Philadelphia. In 1879 he 
was purchased by the late General W. T. Withers, and taken to 
his Fairlawn Farm, Lexington, Kentucky, where he remained 
until he died, January 25, 1888, at which time he had more 2:30 
performers to his credit than any horse then living. The Happy 
Mediums developed speed easily and quickly, and were remark- 
able for the purity of their gait. The most famous of his get is 
the mare Nancy Hanks, that lowered the world's record to 2:04 
in 1892. The mares bred to Happy Medium never were as a 
whole of good breeding, and in his early stud career they were 
largely of inferior blood and quality. His fame has steadily 
grown, and with ninety-two standard performers to his credit, 
and his sons and daughters breeding on, the blood of Happy 
Medium is justly held in very high esteem as a positive speed- 
producing element. Fifty-one of his sons have produced two 
hundred and thirteen, and forty-seven of his daughters have 
produced fifty-nine standard performers. 

Jay Gould was one of the most famous of all the sons of Ham- 
bletonian on the turf and the sensational trotting stallion of his 
day, and he now, in turn, takes a high place among producing sons 
of the great father of trotters. This horse was bred by the late 
Richard Sears, of Orange County, New York, was foaled 1864, 



■308 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

and was got by Hambletonian, out of Lady Sanford, by Seely's 
American Star; grandam Old Sorrel, by Exton Eclipse; tiiird 
dam by Lawrence's Messenger Duroc, etc. At maturity Jay 
Gould was a handsome, blood-like horse, fifteen and one-half 
hands high, and a rich bay in color, with white hind ankles. 
With his dam he was sold while at her side to Charles II. Kerner, 
of New York, who soon after traded them to John Minchiu, of 
Goshen, for the then well-known trotter Drift, Mr. Kerner also 
paying a fair sum in cash. Later the colt came into the hands 
of A. 0. Green, of Fall River, and was by him named Judge 
Brigham. It is said that Mr. Green first learned that Judge 
Brigham was a fast trotter through his taking fright at a train 
one day in 1870 and running away with him at a trot. What- 
ever the facts as to this are, it was soon known that Mr. Green 
had a very fast trotter, and the next season (1871) he started for 
a five-thousand-dollar purse at Buffalo, among the other starters 
being the already famous Judge Fullerton. To the general 
astonishment. Judge Brigham "cut loose" in the second heat, 
winning it in 2:23, thus equaling the stallion record then held 
by George Wilkes, and placing to his credit the fastest heat ever 
up to that time trotted by a horse in his maiden race. He won 
the race handily, and was the sensation of the time. He was at 
once purchased for, I believe, the great i)rice of thirty-five thou- 
sand dollars by the late world-famuus financier. Jay Gould, H. 
N. Smith, and George C. Hall. Later Mr. Smith acquired Mr. 
Hall's interest, and Mr. Kerner bought Mr. Gould's, and finally, 
some years after, Mr. Smith, who had established Fashion Stud 
Farm, at Trenton, New Jersey, and owned the noted mares 
Goldsmith Maid, 2:14, Lady Thorn, 2:18:|, and Lucy, 2:18|, 
became sole owner of Jay Gould, as Judge Brigham was renamed. 
The week following his Buffalo race Jay Gould defeated an- 
other strong' field at Kalamazoo, Michigan; and in 1872 started 
four times, winning in all his races, lowering his record to 2:21^, 
the then champion stallion record. He Avas kept in the stud in 
1873, but being challenged on behalf of Bashaw Jr., the follow- 
ing year, was given a hurried fall jjreparation, and met his chal- 
lenger at Baltimore. BashaAv Jr., broke down in the first heat, 
and Gould of course won an empty victory, but to satisfy the 
audience was driven a public trial in 2:19^. Meanwhile Smug- 
gler had lowered the stallion record to 2:20, and Jay Gould was 
sent against it at Boston, trotting under unfavorable circum- 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 309' 

stances in 2:20^ and 2:21|. This practically closed his turf 
career. He made a number of seasons at Fashion Farm, and in 
his later years at Walnut Hill Farm, near Lexington, Kentucky, 
and died of old age June 10, 1894. Jay Gould's opportunities 
were never of the best. In his earlier years in the stud General 
Knox was more used at Fashion Farm than Jay Gould, and there 
was no training done at Fashion until 1886. Jay Gould is the 
sire of twenty-nine standard performers, the most noted of which 
is the great mare Fixley, 2:08^. Fourteen of his sons have pro- 
duced thirty standard performers, and twenty-eight of his 
daughters have produced forty-six performers, among the latter 
being the great pacer, Eobert J., 2:01^, and such trotters as Poem, 
2:11-^, Colonel Kuser, 2:11^, Mahogany, 2:12^, Edgardo, 2:13f, etc. 
His most noted producing daughter is Lucia, whose dam was the 
famous old trotting mare Lucy, 2:18^, by George M. Patchen, 
2:23^. Lucia is the dam of Edgardo, 2:13f, Hurly Burly, 2:16^, 
and several others in the 2:30 list, and her blood is breeding on 
through both her sons and daughters. 

Strathmoke, taking all things into consideration, must be 
rated among the very greatest sons of Hambletonian. He was a. 
solid bay horse, of the substantial Hambletonian type, foaled 
1866, bred by Aristides Welch at his Chestnut Hill farm, near 
Philadelphia, and was got by Hambletonian out of tlie quite 
famous trotting mare Lady Waltermire, by North American, and 
Lady Waltermire's dam was said to have been by Harris' Ham- 
bletonian. This North American sired Whitehall, that got the 
famous trotter Rhode Island, sire of the still more celebrated 
Governor Sprague, and in the section treating of the latter the 
reader will find particulars concerning North American. Lady 
Waltermire was a noted trotting mare in her day, and it has been 
claimed that she performed faster than 2:30, but I have never 
been able to substantiate this claim. When Strathmore was a 
three-year-old, in 1869, I visited Chestnut Hill. Mr. Welch then 
had three sons of Hambletonian, viz., William Welch, Rysdyk, 
and Strathmore, who was then called Goodwin Watson. The two 
former were led out to be shown, but when I inquired for Good- 
win Watson, Mr. Welch's reply was "Oh, he's a pacer" — except 
that he used an adjective in connection with ''pacer" that added 
emphasis, and betrayed some degree of regret, or indeed dis- 
gust. The fact that several of Strathmore's sons have gotten 
many fast pacers need not be marveled at. I am not aware the":. 



310 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Strathmore was ever trained, and probably his pacing inclination 
furnishes the reason. When he was seven years old he was pur- 
chased by Colonel R. G. Stoner, of Paris, Kentucky, and named 
Strathmore, and up to this time. Colonel Stoner states, he had 
but three foals, one of which was afterward known as Chestnut 
Hill, 2:22^, the first of his get to earn a reputation. His first 
two seasons were made in Montgomery County, after which he 
was taken to Paris, in Bourbon County. Colonel Stoner states 
in one of his catalogues that Strathmore's early opportunities in 
Kentucky were very inferior; that in 1877 and 1878 the service 
fees earned would not pay for his keep; that up to 1879 he 
never served a mare with a record or the dam of an animal with a 
record, and that it was not until Steinway trotted in 1878 as a 
two-year old in 2:31f, and Santa Claus as a five-year-old in 2:18 in 
1879 that any good mares came to Strathmore. At Colonel 
Stoner's sale, February 9, 1886, Strathmore was sold for two 
thousand one hundred and fifty dollars to Pockhill & Bro., of 
Fort Wayne, Indiana, and they owned him until his death, 
March 11, 1895. Strathmore has seventy-one in the standard 
list; twenty-six of his sons and fifty-four of his daughters have 
produced one hundred and fifty-eight standard performers. 

Egbert is one of the youngest sons of Hambletonian, and has 
achieved very fair success in the stud. He is closely inbred to 
the Hambletonian, or rather the Abdallah blood, and is j)ossibly 
the most notable instance of a successful sire being very closely 
inbred. Egbert was bred by Hon. J. H. Walker, Worcester, 
Massachusetts, and was foaled in 1875. He was sold at the sale 
of, Mr. Walker's horses at Worcester in the autumn of 1877, 
when he was purchased for the then great price for a two-year- 
old of three thousand four hundred and twenty-five dollars by 
H. J. Hendryx, of Michigan, a representative of Mr. Veech, of 
Kentucky, being a contending bidder. After the sale Mr. 
Hendryx sold the colt for four thousand dollars to George W. 
Raudenbush, of Reading, Pennsylvania, who I believe still owns 
him. In the spring of 1880 Egbert was taken by Colonel Ricliard 
West to his farm at Georgetown, Kentucky, and kept there a 
number of years, and indeed the greater part of his stud career 
has been in Kentucky. I am not aware that Egbert was ever 
trained. He is individually a superior horse, but is alleged to 
have an unkind disposition. 

Egbert was got by Hambletonian out of Campdown, by Mes- 



hambletonian's soxs and geandsons. 311 

senger Duroc (son of Hambletonian); grandam Miss McLeod 
(dam of Lord Nelson, 2:2G^, and Polonius), by the Holbert Colt 
(son of Hambletonian) ; great-grandam May Fly, by Utter Horse, 
son of Hoyt's Comet; great-great-grandam Virgo, sister to the 
dam of Messenger Duroc, by Roe's Abdallah Chief, son of Ab- 
dallah, the sire of Hambletonian. The Holbert Colt, son of 
Hambletonian, was a pacer, and others in Egbert's ancestry paced; 
and in commenting on his pedigree, from this point of view, at 
the time Colonel West took him to Kentucky, I remarked in 
Wallace'' s Monthly, March, 1880: "Colonel West need not be 
surprised if he finds quite a number of Egbert's offspring start- 
ing off at a pace." The facts have borne out the prediction, as a 
glance at Egbert's long list of fast pacers will show. Egbert is 
the sire of seventy-five standard performers, while twenty-five of 
his sons, and eighteen of his daughters have produced seventy- 
four standard performers. 

Masterlode, that left a family of some merit in Michigan, was 
a mammoth bay, foaled 1868, got by Hambletonian out of Lady 
Irwin by Seeley's American Star. He was a gigantic, coarse 
horse, and was certainly the largest horse that ever earned 
a reputation as a sire of trotters. It is said he was quite seven- 
teen hands high and was built on a heavy mold even for his 
height. He was bred by James M. Mills, Orange County, New 
York, and passed to A. C. Fisk, Coldwater, Michigan, who 
owned him until his death in 1892. The most noted of his get 
was Belle F., 2:15^, that was one of the very best campaigners out 
in 1886. He has twenty-eight to his credit in the list, and seven- 
teen of his sons and sixteen of his daughters have produced in all 
fifty-seven standard performers. 

Aberdeen shares with Dictator such honors as attach to the 
highest success of the ''Hambletonian-Star cross" in the stud. 
This horse was bred by the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, at 
Passaic, New Jersey, and a full account of the investigation of the 
pedigree of his dam, the noted Widow Machree, 2:29, will be found 
in Chapter XXIX., on the investigation of pedigrees. Widow 
Machree was altogether the best trotter of the American Star 
family, and was especially noted for her gameness. Bred to 
Hambletonian, it was natural that she should produce a trotter, 
and Aberdeen was quite a trotter in his day. As a three-year- 
old he won a stake at Prospect Park, distancing his field in 2:46, 
and the statement has been published that hs later in his career 



313 THE HORSE OF AMEEICA. 

trotted a slow New Jersey track in 2:24^^. This horse was foaled 
in 1866, and was a bay fifteen hands three inches high, and very 
stoutly, indeed coarsely made, and was of a dangerously vicious 
disposition. The good race mare Hattie Woodward, that made 
a record of 2:15^, first attracted attention to Aberdeen as a sire, 
and in 1881 lie was purchased by General Withers and taken to 
Fairlawn, and before this his stud opportunities had been very 
limited. He died in 1892. By far the best of his get is the 
great mare Kentucky Union, that made a record of 2:07i in 1896. 
Aberdeen has forty in the standard list, fourteen of his sons have 
produced fifty-seven, and seventeen of his daughters have pro- 
duced nineteen standard performers. 

Sweepstakes must be classed among the successful sons of 
Hambletonian as a sire of trotters, though in the second genera- 
tion his family have yet failed of great distinction, nor did 
Sweepstakes himself get extreme speed. This Avas a bay horse, 
foaled 1867, by Hambletonian out of Emma Mills, that also pro- 
duced Mott's Independent, by Seely's American Star. He was 
bred by the late Harrison Mills, near Goshen, in Orange County, 
New York, and was never, I believe, trained. Indeed it lias 
been stated that he never wore harness, and is perhaps the most 
remarkable example of a strictly undeveloped sire of trotters. 
The most noted of his get is the bay horse Captain Lyons, 2:17^. 
Sweepstakes sired thirty-three trotters and two pacers that are 
standard performers, four sons have produced eight trotters and 
two pacers, and twenty of his daughters have produced twenty- 
five trotters and four pacers. 

Governor S Prague is one of the few horses not descended in 
the male line from one of the great foundation progenitors, and 
that yet was a trotter of merit and the founder of a trotting family. 
His dam, however, was a producing daughter of Hambletonian, 
and this must be regarded as the probable source of his power, 
though his sire was a fine trotter for his day. 

Back in the thirties a Frenchman living at Rouse's Point, 
New York, near the Canadian boundary line, bred a pacing mare 
to a hors3 that was kept in the same stable with Sir Walter, 
thoroughbred son of Hickory, and the result was the horse 
known as North American, or the Bvillock Horse. It was long 
claimed that North American was by Sir Walter, but the best 
authenticated version is given in Wallace's Monthly, for 1880. 
This was the statement of a Mr. Ladd, said to be a reliable man, who 



hambletonian's sons and grandsons. 313 

knew the Frenchman who bred North American. Ladcl had for- 
merly lived at Rouse's Point, and kept a little hotel at Benson's 
Landing on Lake Champlain. Ladd's statement was that the 
Frenchman had a little pacing mare, from which he wanted to raise 
a foal, but would not pay more than three dollars for any horse's 
service. Sir Walter's fee was fifteen dollars, but in the same 
stable was a large stallion that was used to haul water from the 
lake to the hotel, and the Frenchman was permitted to have the 
service of this horse for three dollars, and this is the only reliable 
version I could ever obtain as to the pedigree of North American. 
Besides the line we are now considering, this horse got Lady 
AValtermire, the dam of the great Strathmore, and one of his 
daughters is the dam of two in the 2:30 list, and Vergennes Black 
Hawk came from another. North America was said to have 
been a natural trotter, and quite fast for a short distance. A 
son of his, named Whitehall, from the name of the place where 
he w^as bred, was taken to Ohio from New York about 1854 and 
there got the noted Rhode Island, 2:23^, the sire of Governor 
Sprague. Rhode Island was a brown horse, foaled about 1857, 
and his dam was by a black horse called Davy Crockett that was 
brought from Penns3dvania, and her dam was called Bald Hornet. 
This mare, Mag Taylor, was bred to Whitehall twice, one of her 
foals being Belle Rice, the dam of the stallion Harry Wilkes, sire 
of Rosalind Wilkes, 3:14^^, and the other was Rhode Island. This 
horse trotted many races, and at Fashion Course, New York, 
October 27, 1868, earned his record of 2:23|. He about this time 
passed into the hands of Sprague & Akers, and he died in 1875. 
At this time Governor Amasa Sprague had among his brood 
mares Belle Brandon, by Rysdyk's Hambletonian out of a 
daughter of Young Bacchus. This was a bay mare, foaled in 
1854 in Orange County, and was a fast trotter and a mare of 
great general excellence. She was driven as a mate to Sprague's 
Hambletonian, and Mr. Sprague claimed that he had once driven 
her a mile in 2:29. Bred to Volunteer she produced Amy, 2:20^:, 
and to Rhode Island, produced in 1872, Governor Sprague, 2:20|. 
Governor Sprague was a black horse, approximating fifteen 
hands two inches in height, and very substantially built. He is 
described as having been an exceedingly handsome horse, es- 
pecially in action, his gait having been pure and beautiful. In 
1873 he was sent to Kansas and trained, and so promising was he 
that he was that year sold to Higbee Brothers and Mr. Babcock, 



314 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

of Canton, Illinois, for one thousand five hundred dollars. He 
was shown and known as a very fast four-year-old, trotting 
public exhibitions in about 2:22. With the exception of a three- 
year-old race at Earlville, Illinois, he did not start in a public 
race until July 20, 1876, when at Chicago he easily defeated a 
good field, and so promising and attractive did he seem that the 
late Jerome I. Case, of Racine, paid the great price of twenty- 
seven thousand five hundred dollars for him. At Poughkeepsie, 
New York, that season he lowered his record to 2:20-^, and a few 
more races ended his short but brilliant turf career. He died at 
Lexington, Kentucky, May 23, 1883, at the early age of eleven 
years. His stud career was therefore short, and this fact we 
must remember in estimating his rank as a sire. Kate Sprague, 
2:18, and Linda Sprague, 2:19, were about the best of his imme- 
diate progeny, and Rounds' Sprague, that has twenty trotters 
and pacers in the 2:30 list, some of them in better than 2:20, seems 
to be his most successful son. Governor Sprague has to his credit 
thirty-six trotters and two pacers with standard records, twenty- 
two of his sons have sired fifty-four trotters and fifteen pacers, 
and his daughters have produced twenty-three trotters and six 
pacer.3. There was nothing in the inheritance of Rhode Island to 
justify a supposition that he would transmit speed uniformly, and, 
like Smuggler, the speed-getting power Avith him v/as sporadic. 
But from his dam. Belle Brandon, Governor Sprague received tlie 
blood of Hambletonian through an individual that had speed 
herself and naturally produced speed; and this strain, combined 
with the blood of a horse that was good enough in his day to beat 
Lucy, American Girl and George Wilkes, gave Governor Sprague 
a right to be all that he was. 



CHAPTEE XXIll. 

MAMBRINO CHIEF AND HIS FAMILY. 

Description and history of Mambrino Chief — The pioneer trotting stallion of 
Kentucky — Matched ao^ainst Pilot Jr. — His best sons — Mambrino Patchen, 
his opportunities and family — Woodford Mambrino, a notable trotter and 
sire — Princess — Mambrino Pilot — Other sons of Mambrino Chief. 

Mambrino Chief was a dark bay or brown horse, got by 
Mambrino Paymaster, grandson of imported Messenger, and his- 
dam was a large, coarse mare that was brought from the West in 
a drove, and absolutely nothing was known of her blood. The 
theory was once advanced in print that she must have been by 
Stevens' Messenger Duroc, but I think it was never repeated. 
The basis of this theory was, that the horse referred to was large 
and coarse, with a long thigh bone, and as the mare was large and 
coarse, with a long thigh bone, she must have been a daughter of 
his. There are some obvious difficulties about accepting this 
'"thigh-bone" pedigree. In the first place, the inventor of it 
never saw either the horse or the mare, and hoAV could he have 
put his tapeline on their "thigh-bones" and thus ascertained 
they were of the same length? In the second place, it is not 
known, nor was it known to the inventor, that the horse ever had 
been within three hundred miles of the dam of this "daughter" 
of his. It is not much wonder that the "horse business" is 
hardly considered reputable when an educated man will advance 
such senseless gabble as the basis of a pedigree. This mare pro- 
duced another colt called Goliah that developed some speed, but 
this was not the Goliah that was on the trotting turf. 

Mambrino Chief was bred by Richard Eldridge, of Dutchess 
County, New York, and was owned by Warren Williams; in the 
spring of 1851 he passed into the hands of James M. Cockroft 
and Gr. T. Williams; was kept two or three seasons in Ulster 
County; trotted, under the saddle a trial in 2:36; sold to James 
B. Clay of Kentucky, in the winter of 1854, and then to Gray (^ 



316 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

Jones, 1857, for five thousand and twenty dollars, and died 1801. 
Soon after his arrival in Kentucky he was matched to trot against 
Pilot Jr., and the match stirred up a great deal of' interest 
among the breeders. He was so big and coarse and so far re- 
moved from the type of the running horse that very few believed 
he could show any speed at any gait, for the distance of a mile 
and repeat. He was placed in the hands of Dr. Herr, who had 
had some experience in handling trotters, for preparation. When 
the day came there was quite an assemblage to witness the race 
but the Pilot Jr. party came forward and paid forfeit. This was 
a sore disappointment to those who thought the big horse could 
not trot, and to satisfy them that he could trot and trot fast. Dr. 
Herr drove him to show his gait, and notwithstanding his quarter 
cracks he satisfied all that he really was a trotter. This was an 
auspicious opening of a successful career extending through the 
remaining six years of his life. 

In the sense of success, Mambrino Chief was really the pioneer 
trotting stallion of Kentucky. True, " Old " Abdallah had been 
there fourteen years earlier, but he was in bad shape and breeders 
did not like him. He was very plain in his appearance and only 
left some half-dozen of foals behind him when he was brought back 
to Long Island. The breeders all turned to his stable companion, 
Commodore, that was more after the pattern of the running horse, 
and would not look at Abdallah. This Commodore filled the 
blue-grass fields with his foals, but none of them could trot. He 
was a son of Mambrino, by imported Messenger, and was an in- 
bred Messenger, if his pedigree was right, but he was a failure as 
a trotting sire. Mr. Marcus Downing took his horse. Bay Mes- 
senger, there about the same time and he was a failure also, not- 
Avithstanding he was a grandson of imported Messenger. Both 
Commodore and Bay Messenger should have been trotting sires, 
but either one of two reasons was suflBcient to prevent that con- 
summation. First their blood and physical structure were all 
right, but the mental structure — the instinct to trot — was lack- 
ing; they inherited from some ancestor that could not and was 
not inclined to trot. Second, Kentuckians of that period knew 
nothing about trotters and they may have lacked in the requisite 
knowledge, skill and patience to develop them. It is true that 
old Pacing Pilot and some other pacing tribes were there that 
would occasionally throw a pacer with the diagonal motion, like 
Pilot Jr. , but there was no other blood there that trotted before the 



MAMBRI]SrO CHIEF AND HIS FAMILY. 317 

arrival of Mambrino Chief. This pacing element was a very- 
valuable element upon which to build up the trotter, but unfor- 
tunately and wherever it was possible, a running pedigree was 
tacked on to the pacer, and thus, in the estimation of Kentuck- 
ians it was the running blood that did it. 

The six years of his services in Kentucky gave sufficient time 
to establish his value as a trotting sire, but not sufficient to build 
up a large family. This limited period must be further re- 
stricted, in estimating his value, by the fact that the war broke 
out in 1861, at the very time when the larger part of his offspring 
were just at the right age for development. This important fact 
has been very generally overlooked when estimating the true 
value of this horse. The question has often been asked why 
this horse succeeded in Kentucky when he had not succeeded in 
the North? This is too broad a question to be considered in this 
historical sketch, but will be considered at another place in this 
volume. In passing it, some very intelligent writers have at- 
tributed it to what is called "the climatic outcross," and there 
may be some real value in this point, but the great cause, aside 
from the new surroundings and expectations of his progeny, may 
be found in the fact that his own speed was never developed 
until the very eve of his transfer to Kentucky. His instinct to 
trot and to trot fast had remained dormant, practically, during 
the Avhole j)eriod of his Northern service, and when he reached 
Kentucky he was, in a sense, a new horse and conscious of his 
powers as a trotter. The salutary effects of development, at 
whatever gait, have been shown in ten thousand instances and 
will continue to be shown as long as the interests and ambitions 
of man shall prompt him to strive to surpass his neighbor. 

At one time it was maintained right vehemently by the owners 
of the stock of Mambrino Chief, as well as some others, that as a 
stock horse he was not only equal but superior to Hambletonian. 
In 1867, when the battles were raging between Dexter and Lady 
Thorn, this view showed little abatement, and notwithstanding the 
gelding was beating the mare all the time, they still maintained 
that in the end she would be the conqueror. AVhen Lady Thorn 
was seriously crippled and retired from the turf, there were many 
sad hearts in the Mambrino family and many wonderful stories 
were told, privately, of what Dan Mace had seen her do, and that 
he was keeping very quiet till an opportunity came to show the 
most wonderful flight of speed that the world had ever seen or 



■318 



THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



ever would see. With the shroud of what "might have been" 
about them, they were "of the same opinion still." 

Mambrino Chief left six in the 2:30 list; twenty-three sons that 
put ninety-five in the list and seventeen daughters that produced 
twenty-four trotters. 

LEADING SONS OP MAMBRINO CHIEF. 

















tc 


T3 O 












m 


03 


a 
o . 

OQ CO 


S3^ 












a 


^ 




a o 






-a 




cS 


^ 




H 


17 5 


Name. 




eS 


a 


1^- 

a 
a 

m 


he 

_a 
'G 

S3 

£ 


ho* 
'3 

3 

-a 

o 


Produced 
and daug 


Total No. 
performe 
generatioi 


Mambrino Patclien 




1863 
1863 


1885 
1879 


35 
13 


51 
33 


90 
34 


359 

173 


384 


Woodford Mambrino, 3:3H. . 


185 


Mambrino Pilot, 3: 


34f 


1859 


1885 


9 


17 


15 


71 


80 


Clark CMef 




1861 
1856 
1861 


1871 
188- 
189- 


6 

t 


13 
4 
6 


35 
15 
14 


43 
35 
34 


49 


Ericsson, 3:30^ 


31 


Mambrino Chief Jr 


(Fisk's).. 


39 



Mambrino Patchen was the best son of Mambrino Chief and 
was brother to Lady Thorn, 2:18^. He was foaled 1862, after the 
death of his sire, and was bred by Levi T. Rodes. His dam was 
by Gano, a running-bred son of American Eclij^se; his grandam 
was a pacing mare by a colt of Sir William, but what Sir William 
is not known; his great-grandam Avas an inveterate pacer and 
never was known to strike any other gait. Mambrino Patchen 
was so much smoother and handsomer than his sire, and was so 
much of a failure as a trotter, that a very strong conviction prevailed 
among the friends and neighbors of his owner that he was not a son 
of Mambrino Chief, nor a brother of Lady Thorn. To this story 
that he was a Denmark and not a Mambrino Chief I never have 
given any shadow of credence. The attempt of his owner. Dr. 
Herr, to make him a trotter was patient and persistent, extend- 
ing through several years, but with all his skill and experience he 
failed. Nobody was ever able to "catch" him a mile, but it 
seems to have been conceded that he might go somewhere in the 
"forties." While this persistent and long-continued training 
failed in its original purpose of giving the horse a record of repu- 
table speed, there can be no doubt, under the law that governs, 
that this development did great good to the horse, as a progenitor 



MAMBRINO CHIEF AND HIS FAMILY. 379 

of trotters. The conditions being a handsome horse, with the 
banner constantly flying over him, "full brother to Lady Thorn," 
an industrious and very capable owner, in the heart of the great- 
est breeding region in the whole country, it is easy to account for 
a very wide and lucrative patronage. Still, as a getter of speed 
he was not a great success, and as a getter of high speed he was a 
failure. With all the facilities for development, only twenty-five 
of his progeny have found a place in the 2:30 list, the fastest of 
which has a record of 2:20^. Of his sons, fifty-one are the sires of 
one hundred and twenty-six trotters, and of his daughters, ninety 
have, produced one hundred and twenty-nine standard per- 
formers. He has proved himself a very great sire of brood mares, 
and when his daughters are bred to horses of stronger inherit- 
ance, they stand among the best. 

Woodford Mambrixo. — This son of Mambrino Chief was a 
large brown horse, foaled 18G2. He was bred by Mr. Mason 
Henry, of Woodford County, Kentucky. His dam was also the 
dam of other trotters, was got by Woodford, son of Kosciusko, 
and her dam was a farm mare without any known breeding. 
Woodford was a large, strong horse used only for farm work, to 
which he was well suited. After spending a good deal of time 
and labor on his pedigree I am constrained to say that while he 
may have been a son of Kosciusko, his dam's breeding is worse 
than unsatisfactory. Woodford Mambrino made a record of 
2:21^, and placed thirteen of his get in the 2:30 list. He left 
twenty-three sons that were the sires of standard performers, 
and twenty-four daughters that produced twenty-seven standard 
performers. His son, Princeps, owned by Mr. E. S. Veech, of 
Indian Hill Farm, near Louisville, Kentucky, was in the stud 
far and away the best of his sons, and although he had no record 
of his own he placed in the list forty-four trotters and four 
pacers, many of them with fast records. 

Mambkixo Pilot was a very large and very coarse horse. He 
Avas a brown, got by Mambrino Chief, foaled 1859, dam Juliet, by 
Pilot Jr.; grandam by Webster, son of Medoc; great-grandam by 
Whip. He was bred by Thomas Hook, of Scott County, Kentucky, 
and after passing through the hands of Dr. Herr and others 
he was sold to C. P. Relf , of Philadelphia, and, I think, remained 
in his family till he died, 1885. He had a record to saddle 
of 2:27^. He put nine of his get into the 2:30 list, and seventeen 



320 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

of his sons left fifty-one performers and fourteen of his daughters 
produced twenty performers. 

Many others of the descendants of Mambrino Chief *might be 
noticed, but it is not the purj)ose of this volume to dwell upon 
matters that are accessible in the current literature of the trot- 
ting horse. The foundations of breeds and the leading heads of 
tribes must command my labor. The table shows the rank of 
the other sons of Mambrino Chief that achieved any degree of 
success, and of these clearly the best was Clark Chief, that died 
at ten years old. 



CHAPTER XXIV, 

THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 

The imported Barb, Grand Bashaw — Young Bashaw, an inferior individual — 
His greatest son, Andrew Jackson — His dam a trotter and pacer — His his- 
tory — His noted son, Keuible Jaci'son — Long Island Black Hawk — Henry 
Clay, founder of the Clay family — Cassius M. Clay- — The various horses 
named Cassius M. Clay — George M. Patchen — His great turf career — 
George M. Patchen Jr. — Harry Clay — The Moor, and his son Sultan's 
family. 

This family is no longer prominent in trotting annals and its 
blood has been practically absorbed by other strains that have 
proved themselves more potent in transmitting and more uniform 
and more speedy in performing. The name '^Bashaw Family" 
is a misnomer and it should never have been used, but as it has 
represented, for many years, the oldest line of developed speed, it 
seems a necessity to recognize it here. A branch of this family, 
designated as "The Clay Family" has perpetuated itself in some 
strength and will be considered in this chapter. 

Gkand Bash AAV, the horse that gave this family its name, was 
imported from Tripoli by Richard B. Jones, who was the American 
consul at that port. Mr. Morgan was associated with him, and they 
imported at the same time two other Barbs, Grand Sultan and 
Saladin. Grand Bashaw was kept in Lower Merion, Montgomery 
County, Pennsylvania, several years; Grand Sultan was kept in 
New Salem, New Jersey, for a time, and Saladin was taken to 
North Carolina and afterward died in Georgia. From these 
three horses nothing has been left to the horse history of the 
country but one single attenuated line. Grand Bashaw was a 
black horse, fourteen hands and an inch high, with a star and a 
snip on his nose. He was kept all his life in the vicinity of 
Philadelphia, and died at Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1845. 

Young Bashaw was a grey horse, about fifteen and one-quarter 
hands high, and is the only descendant of Grand Bashaw through 
which we can trace to that horse. He was foaled 1822 and was 



322 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

bred by Thomas Logan, of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 
His dam was Pearl, by Bond's First Consul, a famous running 
horse, his grandam Fancy, by imported Messenger, and his great- 
grandam by imported Kockingham. This is the pedigree under 
which he was advertised, but it has never been authenticated in 
any of its crosses. Judging by the horse himself and his progeny 
there can hardly be a doubt that there was a Messenger cross in 
it, but just where cannot be determined. 

He made his first season in Salem, New Jersey, 1826. He was 
then four years old and by no means handsome or attractive in 
his form. His head, ear and neck were his worst features; but 
in addition to these defects he was flat on the ribs and habitually 
carried his tail to one side. His limbs and feet were as good as 
ever were made, but his great redeeming quality was his trotting 
gait. When in Salem he was only a rough, partly developed, 
four-year-old colt, but he showed then a step and a rate of speed 
so remarkable as to induce a few to breed to him, notwithstand- 
ing his ungainly appearance. He did not cover more than a 
dozen mares that season, and all-told he got eight foals. Out of 
these eight, seven proved to be superior trotters for that day. 
Andrew Jackson was the best, but there was another that could 
go below 2:40. The common remark was, wherever he touched a 
mare of Messenger blood, there was sure to come a trotter. This 
was the general rule, but the best hit he ever made, probably, 
Avas when he covered Joseph Hancock's black pacing mare and 
got Andrew Jackson. 

In looking over his blood elements we can see nothing in his 
pedigree to justify these trotting qualities except the grandam. 
Fancy, by Messenger. First Consul was a great race horse, but 
neither he nor his descendants ever evinced a disposition to trot. 
The horse Eockingham was contemporaneous with Messenger 
and a constant rival while Messenger was about Philadelphia. 
He was not wholly running-bred, as he was by Towser, afterward 
called Counsellor, and out of a hunting mare. As a stock horse 
he was esteemed as only second to Messenger on the Delaware, 
where he stood many years. 

The fame of Young Bashaw did not cease nor die out after the 
exploits of Andrew Jackson, Black Bashaw, Charlotte Temple, 
Washington and others from his own loins. The Clays, the 
Long Island Black Hawks and the Patchens have kept spreading 
it wider and wider until of late years we find that only the one 



THE CLAYS AKD BASHAWS. 323 

great Hambletonian family has overshadowed them all. Young 
Bashaw, after eleven years in the stud along the Delaware River, 
^bove and below Philadelphia, died at Morrisville, Bucks County, 
Pennsylvania, June, 1837. 

Andrew Jackson was the most noted son of Young Bashaw. 
He was a black horse, fifteen and a half hands high, with three 
white feet and a strip of white in his face. He was very well 
formed in every point and was strong, compact, short-legged and 
handsome. He was foaled 1827, and was bred by Joseph Hancock, 
■of Salem, New Jersey. His dam was a strong, compact black 
mare that both trotted and paced, and was noted for her speed at 
the latter gait. This mare was brought in a drove from Ohio, in 
the spring of 1820 and on the twenty-first of June of that year she 
was sold to Mr. Hancock, of Salem, New Jersey, for one hundred 
■dollars. He kept her a little over six years, and in the spriug of 
1826 bred her to Young BashaAv, and in the fall of that year sold her 
to Powell Carpenter; and soon after he sold her to Daniel Jeffreys, 
-a brickmaker on the Germantown road, near Philadelphia. She 
was then in foal by Young Bashaw, and the next spring she 
■dropped the colt that became famous as Andrew Jackson. 

The incidents connected with the history of this mare are here 
given, perhaps in unnecessary detail, but as Andrew Jackson 
was very extensively advertised under a fraudulent pedigree from 
tibout 1834 till the time of his death, and as I had at one time 
accepted it as true, it is better that it should be made very plain, 
especiall}' as I had been severely criticised for changing it. The 
<!orrection made, as above, was founded on information received 
from two separate and distinct sources and both thoroughly re- 
liable. The fraudulent pedigree of this mare represented her as 
^'by Whynot, son of imported Messenger, and her dam by Messen- 
ger" himself. This was just such a pedigree as so great a horse 
should have had, but there was no truth in it. The attack was 
led by quite a large breeder in one of the prairie States, who had 
a number of animals remotely descended from Andrew Jackson. 
He did not even pretend to know anything at all about the truth 
of the matter, but simply urged most vehemently that the pedi- 
gree should be restored because it was old. The fact of the 
matter was the man wanted the old lie instead of the new truth 
maintained because it would help to sell his stock, which was the 
very object for which the lie was originally invented. 

Daniel Jeffreys was very much addicted to trotting horses, and 



324 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

when he bought the black mare that was then carrying Andrew 
Jackson he kept her for his own driving and named her "Char- 
coal Sal." She was no doubt among the fastest o5 the road 
horses, but there is no record of her ever being in a race. How 
much Jeffreys drove Charcoal Sal that autumn cannot now be deter- 
mined; probably too much for the physical, but not too muck 
for the mental, organization of the foal she was carrying. 

About the break of day, one morning in the following April,, 
somebody was passing Jeffreys' brickyard (my recollection is, 
it was George Woodruff himself), and he heard a splashing in the- 
water accumulated in one of the clay pits, and Charcoal Sal cir- 
cling round in great distress. She had dropped her foal, and in 
its weak efforts to get on its feet, it had rolled into the pit. It 
was at once pulled out and the family aroused, and no time was 
lost in rubbing it dry and wrapping it in warm blankets. Some- 
of the mare's milk was poured into it from time to time, and to- 
ward noon it was so much revived and strengthened as to mani- 
fest a disposition to get on its feet. This was due, principally,, 
to the womanly care and good nursing of Mrs. Jeffreys. But, 
when helped up, he appeared to have strength enough every- 
where but in his pastern joints, and there he had no strength at 
all. In this condition the colt remained a day or two, a most 
pitiable and most helpless object, standing on its pasterns instead 
of its feet. One morning at the breakfast-table Mr. Jeffreys, 
said he would give any of the boys a dollar if he would put that 
colt out of misery and bury it out of his sight. Mrs. 'Jeffreys,, 
whose womanly feelings and sympathies were all enlisted, replied 
to her husband's remark that "the boy who would kill that colt 
never could eat another mouthful at that table." What a grand 
exhibition of true womanly instincts I Day by day her unremit- 
ting care was rewarded by seeing a little more strength gather- 
ing in the weak places, and at last her kind, motherly heart was- 
gladdened by seeing him skip and play, a strong beautiful colt. 

Mr. Jeffreys kept the colt till he was some five or six years old 
and then sold him to John Weaver, whose residence was about 
half a mile from the old Hunting Park Course. He remained 
the property of Mr. Weaver till he died, September 19, 1843. In 
his stud services he was kept on both sides of the Delaware, in 
the region of Philadelphia, and made one season, perhaps two, on 
Long Island. As a trotter he stood as the first of all stallions of 
his day. 



THE CLA'iS AND BASHAWS. 325 

His first race took place October 19, 1832, over the Hunting 
Park Course for a purse of two hundred dollars for green horses, 
to saddle. He was entered under the name of "Brickmaker," 
was ridden by George Woodruff ("Uncle George"), and beat 
Jersey Fagdown, son of Fagdown, by Messenger. Time 6:30, 
6:23. 

The next year he beat Jersey Fagdown again for the same 
purse and over the same course. 

October, 1834, he again won the same purse, over the same 
course, at two miles to saddle, beating Sally Miller. Time 5:26, 
5:25. 

The next October, 1835, over the same course, the same con- 
ditions, he beat Lady Warrenton, by Abdallah, and Daniel D. 
'Tompkins, by a son of Winthrop Messenger. Time 5:20, 5:19. 

These performances have been extended far enough to give a 
Just conception of iiis speed and his staying qualities. His races 
.seem to have been pretty much all to saddle and two-mile heats. 
In that day most races were to saddle. George Woodruff told 
me he was on his back when he made Edwin Forrest trot in 
2:31^ to win, but whether it was in a race or a trial I cannot now 
recall. Mr. George Woodruff was an uncle of Hiram W^oodruff 
and a very worthy man. To him I am indebted for all the de- 
tails of the early life of Andrew Jackson, and they were of his 
■own personal knowledge. 

Kemble Jackson. — About the year 1853, of all the idols of 
the trotting-horse world, perhaps no one had so many worship- 
ers as Kemble Jackson. In 1852 he was beaten by O'Blennis, 
three-mile heats in harness, and in April, 1853, he was beaten by 
both Green Mountain Maid and Lady Vernon, mile heats in har- 
ness, but in June following he achieved a great triumph. The 
race was on the Union Course and there was a vast concourse of 
people there to see it. The purse and stake was for four thou- 
sand dollars, three-mile heats to two hundred and fifty-pound 
wagons. The interest was very intense, as O'Blennis, Boston 
Girl, Pet, lola and Honest John were in it. Each horse in the 
race made better time than he ever made before, and yet Kemble. 
Jackson took the lead and maintained it from end to end, with- 
out a skip or a break. After the first heat even, the friends of 
O'Blennis would not hedge their money, for they had faith that 
the gallant son of Abdallah would win. The finish of the second 
heat was in the order above given. The time was 8:03, 8:04f. 



oZii THE HORSE OF AMERICA, 

Faster time has since been made to wagon, but probably not with- 
this weight and at this distance. As a weight-puller for three 
miles I believe he still remains the champion. He was a very 
strongly built chestnut horse, and was got by Andrew Jackson 
the last year of his life. 

The pedigree of his dam was in confusion for a long time. 
Her name was Fanny Kemble. There were a number of run- 
ning-bred mares named after that very popular actress, and every- 
body who had anything tracing to "Fanny Kemble" was sure 
that that particular mare was the dam of Kemble Jackson. In the 
first volume of the "Register" he is given as out of Fanny Kem- 
ble by Sir Archy, and in the second volume there was some fairly 
good evidence that he was out of Fanny Kemble by Hunt's 
Eagle, tracing on through running lines. It is true he was out 
of a mare called Fanny Kemble, but neither of the two foregoing. 
Pier blood was wholly unknown. The Hon. Ely Moore was a 
member of Congress, and when on his way to Washington in 1839 
he saw a very fine, stout-looking mare hitched to a gig in the 
city of Baltimore. She was a chestnut and showed such ability 
to handle a great heavy gig with ease and rapidity that he bought 
her. He bought her for what she was herself and not for what 
her blood was. There was no evidence asked or given as to how 
she was bred. This mare produced several foals to Andrew 
Jackson, the youngest of which was Kemble Jackson. While he 
was still a colt, Mr. Moore presented him to his son-in law, G. 
U. Eeynolds, who still owned him when he died. Mr. Reynolds 
is an intelligent and very reputable man, and this is the history 
of the origin of Kemble Jackson as given to me in person by 
him. Mr. Moore paid two hundred and fifty dollars for this 
mare Fanny Kemble, and she was so handsome and so fast on the 
road that he considered her a very cheap mare. The company 
never was too hot nor the road too long for her. 

Everybody has heard of "The Kemble Jackson Check" and 
nearly everybody, until within the last few years at least, has- 
been using it without knowing Just why or when it can 
.be used with advantage. When in the hands of Hiram Wood- 
ruff, Kemble Jackson got into the habit of bringing his chin back 
against his breast, and in that shape Hiram could pull on him all 
day without getting control of him. In this dilemma, Mr. 
Reynolds suggested an overdraw check which might prevent the 
indulgence of this bad habit. Hiram took the suggestion, had 



THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 337 

one made, and it was a snccess, in his case. In twenty-four da3's 
after the performance Avhich made him a great name from one 
end of the land to the otiier he died of rupture. As he was only 
nine years old and as he was just beginning to be appreciated as 
a stallion the breeders of the country sustained a great loss. Up 
to this point in his history he had no reputation, had been little 
patronized and left but Cow of his progeny to perpetuate his 
name. 

Long Island Black. Hawk. — This son of Andrew Jackson 
was foaled 1837 and his dam was the distinguished trotter Sally 
Miller, by Tippoo Saib, son of Tippoo Saib by imported Messen- 
ger. This mare was bred in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and 
trotted as a three-year-old in 1838 on the Hunting Park Course, 
Philadelphia. She was distinguished in her day, beating many 
of the best, and was the first three-year-old trotter of which we 
have any account. She was finally owned on Long Island, but I 
have never been able to learn the name of her owner. Black 
Hawk trotted some famous races on Long Island, the most noted 
of which, perhaps, was his match with Jenny Lind in which he 
was to pull a two hundred and fifty-pound wagon, and the mare 
the usual weight. In this match he beat her in straight heats. 
Time 2:40, 2:38, 3:43. "in 1849 he beat Cassius M. Clay, time 
3:41, 3:38, 3:41. This horse was owned for a time by Jonas 
Hoover, of Germantown, Columbia County, New York, and was 
there called Andrew Jackson Jr., or Young Andrew Jackson. 
He made some seasons in Orange County, and died at Mont- 
gomery in that county July, 1850. His progeny were not 
numerous and but two of them from his own loins entered the 
3:30 list. His son Jupiter put five in the 3:30 list; Andrew 
Jackson Jr., two; Mohawk, three; Nonpareil, two; Plow Boy, 
one; and Vernol's Black Hawk, one; to which we may add the 
fact that this last named was the sire of the famous Iowa stal- 
lion, Green's Bashaw. Although his life was not long and his 
stud career was probably up to the average, it cannot be said that 
he was a great progenitor of trotters. 

Henry Clay, the nominal head of the tribe that has taken 
his name, was a black horse, foaled 1837, got by Andrew Jackson, 
son of Young Bashaw; and his dam was Surrey, or Lady Surrey, 
as she is sometimes called, a pacing mare that was brought from 
Surrey, New Hampshire, to New York, and was converted to a 
trotter, or possibly she may have been double-gaited from her 



328 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

birth. It has been generally stated in years past that this mare 
was brought from Canada, and as there have been many dis- 
l^utes about her origin, I will try to give what authentic knowl- 
edge we have concerning her. 

Mr. Peter W. Jones, one of the "old-time" horsemen and a 
very reliable man, said that David W. Gilmore, formerly a grocer 
at City Hall Place and Pearl Street, New York, bought a pacing 
mare, five years old, of Mark D. Perkins, of Mount Vernon, New 
Hampshire, which came from Surrey, New Hampshire, and hence 
her name "Lady Surrey." Gilmore rode her to New York, with a 
young man named Love joy. He gave less than one hundred 
dollars for her. She was a superior saddle mare, and as Mr. Gil- 
more appreciated horseback riding he bought her for that purpose. 
Frank Gilmore, who was a deputy sheriff under Sheriff Orser, of 
New York, said that Lady Surrey was the mare his brother rode 
from New Hampshire, and after he sold her she turned out to 
be a trotter. 

This is the story as told by Mr. Jones, and judging from its 
source I have no doubt it is substantially correct. This leaves us 
without any knowledge whatever of the blood of the mare, but 
only that she was both a pacer and a trotter. She was engaged in 
some races and was quite well known to the trotting men of that 
day, and she must have been a pretty good one to have been 
owned by such a horseman as George M. Patchen and by him 
bred to Andrew Jackson. It is said Surrey and Sally Miller were 
coupled with Andrew Jackson the same day; they both stood, 
and the one produced Henry Clay and the other Long Island 
Black Hawk. 

While Henry Clay remained the property of his breeder he was 
trained and was looked upon as a promising young horse, but I 
have not been able to determine what rate of speed he was able 
to show. He certainly did not stand anywhere near the fastest, 
and he does not appear to have ever won a race, and perhaps 
never started in one. Still, he was esteemed as one of the best 
horses on Long Island and was liberally supported while there. 
When about eight years old he was sold for a fine price to Gen- 
eral Wadsworth, of Livingston County, New York, and he was 
kept at various points in that part of the State till he died of old 
age and neglect in 1867. He came into the world when trotters 
were few and he lived till they were many. He left a numerous 
progeny, but as the sire of trotters he was a pronounced failure. 



THE CLAYS AXD BASHAWS. 329 

In examining the 2:30 list I find a single one of his get, before 
he left Long Island, with a single heat of even 2:30. And in 
examining the list of his get during the twenty-odd years of his 
life in Western New York, I find a single representative, with 
a single heat in even 2:30, and this one was out of a mare by old 
Champion, a very noted trotting progenitor. He left three sons 
that appear as sires: Andy Johnson, with three just inside of the 
2:30 list, Henry Clay Jr., with a single one to his credit, and 
Cassius M. Clay, with one very fast one to his credit. This 
Cassius M. Clay was the. sire of the famous George M. Patchen. 
Three of Henry Clay's daughters produced six 2:30 trotters, and 
for a time it was held that the dam of the very famous George 
Wilkes was a daughter of his, but that claim has not been sus- 
tained by later developments. 

The name and memory of the horse Henry Clay would have 
been perpetuated in horse history through an attenuated line of 
descendants, as a fairly good horse, though unsuccessful as a trot- 
ting progenitor, had his bones been left to rest and rot where 
they were buried. Unfortunately, about the time of his death, 
there sprang up a most voluble enthusiast whose special mission 
on earth seemed to be to extol the superlative greatness of Henry 
Clay, and the contemptible worthlessness of "Bill Eysdyk's bull," 
as he designated Hambletonian. He commenced pouring his end- 
less contributions into the columns of the breeding press and 
writing interminable letters to as many prominent breeders as 
would receive them, and all about the Clay blood being the only 
blood from which the trotter could be bred. These effusions 
were written with some skill, abounding in great prodigality of 
fancy and still greater economy of truth. It was astonishing 
how many men believed what he said and how few understood 
that the "old man" was in it as a "business." He had gathered up 
all the cheap sons of the old horse and wanted to sell them at a 
handsome advance, and for a time the game won. 

To keep the interest from falling oS. and the Clay blood mov- 
ing, he secured access to the purses of two wealthy gentlemen 
who were possessors and admirers of Clay blood, and the bones 
of the horse were taken up, mounted and set up, and presented 
to the United States National Museum at Washington, D. C. 
The bones are still there, and the inscription on the pedestal 
when last seen was as follows: 



330 • THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

" The progenitor of the entire family of Clay 
Horses, and the foundation of the 

American Trotting Horse." • 

Then follow the names of the two gentlemen who presented 
the bones to the Museum, bat as a kindness to them their names 
are omitted. The first clause of the inscription is true, but 
the second is not true, and I very seriously doubt whether they 
ever authorized the second clause. Henry Clay was not the 
"foundation" of anything, except the airy fabric of a fortune for 
our enthusiast. The scheme as an advertising dodge was well 
worked, and the schemer could well exclaim, "Where now is Bill 
Eysdyk's bull?" In the nature of things such shams cannot last; 
this one had its fleeting day, and in the end the sheriff sold its 
worthless accumulations. 

Cassius M. Clay. — This son of Henry Clay Avas quite a large 
bay horse, taking his color and much of his shape from 
his dam. He was foaled 1843, and his dam, Jersey Kate, 
was the dam of the trotting horse John Anderson. Jersey 
Kate was a bay, about fifteen hands three inches high, with 
a clean, bony head, long neck, well set up, and when in driv- 
ing condition was a little high on her legs. She was used in 
livery work, and when a good and fast driver was wanted, Jersey 
Kate was always in demand. In the same stable a pair of 
"Canuck" ponies were kept that were driven in a delivery wagon. 
They were duns with white manes and tails and about fourteen 
and one-half hands high, quick steppers with no speed. One of 
them slipped his halter one night and got Jersev Kate with foal. 
While she was carrying this foal she became the property of Mr. 
Z. B. Van Wyck's father, and when she had dropped her colt and 
was put to farm work it was found that she was too rapid and 
spirited for his other horses, and he sold her to Joseph Oliver, of 
Brooklyn. The colt she dropped was weaned before the sale of 
the dam and remained in the family till he grew up. He was a 
grey, a little below fifteen hands, and as the boy, Z. B. Van Wyck, 
had broken and ridden him he got it into his head that he would 
make a trotter, so he bought him from his father for eighty dol- 
lars. He continued to improve and he sold him to Timothy T. 
Jackson and he to Charles Carman, who trotted him in many 
races. When Mr. Oliver, then owner of Jersey Kate, saw her 
"catch" colt by a "Canuck" pony able to beat many of the 
good ones on the island, he concluded to breed her to Mr. 



THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 331 

Patchen's horse, Henry Clay, and the produce was Cassius M. 
■Clay. From her appearance, form, and especially her action, it 
was the universal opinion she was by Mambrino, son of Messen- 
ger, and it is probable she was, but in the absence of proof she 
must be classed as "breeding unknown." Had it not been for 
the speed of little John Anderson, there would not have been 
any Cassius M. Clay. 

When the colt grew up, Mr. Oliver, his breeder, sold him to 
Mr. George M. Patchen, of Brooklyn, and he became a very popu- 
lar stallion. After the death of Kemble Jackson and Long 
Island Black Hawk he was considered the best trotting stallion 
on Long Island. He was in a good many races, some of which 
were reported, but more that were not, and as against stallions, 
he was with the fastest. In temper he was disposed to be vicious 
and had to be watched. In form he could not be considered 
beautiful, but powerful. When the artist was modeling the 
equestrian statue of Washington that stands in Union Square, 
he had a great search for a horse to serve as a model, and he 
selected Cassius M. Clay as the best representative of majesty 
and power that he could find. Although the bronze is of heroic 
size, it is, no doubt, a fair representation of the outline and 
structure of the horse. He died at Montgomery, Orange County, 
New York, July, 1854, in the same stable where Long Island 
Black Hawk had died four years before. The three great horses. 
Long Island Black Hawk, Kemble Jackson and Cassius M. Clay, 
died just as they entered on what should have been the period of 
their greatest usefulness, the first at the age of thirteen; the 
second at the age of nine; and the third at the age of eleven. If 
these horses had lived through the usual period of horse life, 
doubtless the records of performers would bear very different 
relations from what they do to-day, but the really great sire had 
not yet made his appearance. 

Considering the short period Cassius M. Clay was in the stud 
he left a numerous progeny, but only one of them, George M. 
Patchen, achieved greatness on the turf. He placed thirty-four 
heats in 3:30 or better to his credit and made a record of 2:23^ 
in 1860, which was the fastest for any stallion of his day. This 
was the only one in the 2:30 list from the loins of Cassius M. 
Clay. Nine of his sons became the sires of eighteen trotters, 
and more than a dozen of his sons were named "Cassius M. Clay 



d'S'Z THE HOKSE OF AMEEICA. 

Jr.," thus leading to great confusion and oftentimes uncertainty 
as to identity. 

Cassius M. Clay Jr. (Neave's). — This was a brown horse 
foaled 1848, got by Cassius M. Clay; dam by Chancellor, son of 
Mambrino; grandam by Engineer, sire of Lady Suffolk, He was 
bred by Charles Mitchell, of Manhasset, Long Island, owned by 
Joseph Godwin, New York; stood in Orange County, 1852, in 
Dutchess, 1853, and was taken to Cincinnati that fall. He was 
owned by Mr. Neave, made a few seasons, broke his leg in the 
hands of Mr. McKelvy, and had to be destroyed. Mr. Godwin 
represented this horse to me as very fast until four years old, 
when by an accident he was thrown into the Harlem Kiver when 
hot and was stiff ever afterward. He put four of his get into 
the 2:30 list, and four of his sons got ten trotters and one pacer. 
His early death was esteemed a great loss, for he was better bred 
than most of the other sons of his sire. 

Clay Pilot, by Cassius M. Clay (Neave's), was out of a catch 
filly, whose dam was the famous Kate, the grandam of Almont. 
From the noted old trotting mare Belle of Wabash, whose his- 
tory will be found in Chapter XXX. on the investigation of pedi- 
grees. Clay Pilot got The Moor, himself a fast trotter and a suc- 
cessful sire. He died at ten years old, leaving among others the 
famous Beautiful Bells, 2:29^, that, mated with Electioneer, pro- 
duced a remarkable family; and Sultan, 2:24, sire of the great 
Stamboul, 2:07^, and of thirty-eight other performers, and of 
thirteen producing sons and twenty producing daughters. The 
Moor founded an excellent family. 

From a sister to Crabtree Bellfounder, by imported Bell- 
founder, Neave's Cassius M. Clay got the black stallion Harry 
Clay, 2:29, that was quite a reputable trotter in his day, and left 
five standard performers, sixteen producing sons and twenty- 
three producing daughters, among the latter the famous Green 
Mountain Maid, the dam of Electioneer. 

Cassius M. Clay Jr. (Strader's). — This was a handsome 
brown horse, foaled 1852, by the original Cassius, and his dam was 
a black mare, by Abdallah, that passed through the hands of A. 
Van Cortlandt and afterward became the property of Joseph 
Godwin; grandam by Lawrence's Eclipse; great-grandam the 
Charles Hadley mare by imported Messenger. This pedigree 
has been questioned without assigning any reasons or facts, but 
as it came to me circumstantially and from unquestionable sources. 



THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 333 

I have no reason to doubt it. He was bred by Joseph H, God- 
win, of New York, and foaled the property of Dr. Spaulding, of 
Greenupsburg, Kentucky. He made some seasons in the hands 
of Dr. Herr, of Lexington, Kentucky, was bought 1868 by R. S. 
Strader, and passed to General W. T, Withers, of Lexington, 
where he died 1882. He was engaged in several races and made 
a record of 2:35:^. He put four in the 2:30 list, and he left six- 
teen sons that were the sires of forty-six trotters and seven 
pacers. His daughters have produced well, thirty-four of them 
having produced forty-two trotters and seven pacers. This 
shows him to have been a better horse than his sire and better 
than any of the other sons of his sire. 

George M. Patchen was a large bay horse, fully sixteen hands 
high and heavily proportioned. He was bred by H. F. Sickles, 
Monmouth County, New Jersey, for Richard F. Carman, of New 
York, the owner of his dam. He was got by the original Cas- 
«ius M. Clay, and his dam was a light chestnut mare, owned and 
driven on the road by Mr. Carman. As the blood and origin of 
this mare was for many years unknown, it is necessary to go into 
some particulars concerning it. From 1835 two brothers, 
Thomas and Richard Tone, were contractors on the streets in the 
northern part of New York City. Two or three years afterward 
Richard bought or traded for a large, strong sorrel mare to work 
in one of their dirt carts. It was represented that she had lost a 
foal shortly before and she was thin in flesh and looked coarse. 
When she moved out of a walk she always went into a pace, and that 
seemed to be her natural gait. They kept this mare at work in 
the cart for several years and sometimes turned her out to pas- 
ture in a small field at the foot of "Break-neck" hill, adjoining 
a pasture owned by the Bradhurst family. One morning a two- 
year-old stallion colt, owned by Samuel Bradhurst, was found in 
the pasture with the big pacing mare. He had broken down the 
fence between the two pastures and gotten the big mare with 
foal. In due time she dropped a light chestnut filly, and when 
weaned, Thomas Tone bought this filly from his brother Richard, 
and at two years old commenced working her to his wagon. She 
had very severe treatment for so young an animal and went amiss, 
when Thomas sold her to James Scanlon, a blacksmith, and after 
a time he sold her to Richard F. Carman for a driving mare. 
Like her dam, when she started off she would pace, but after 
going some distance she would strike a trot and go very fast. 



334 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

Mr. Carman paid one hundred dollars for her and he drove her 
beside another that he paid fifteen hundred for, and his fast daily 
drives from Carmanville down to the city soon tested the respec- 
tive merits of the two mares. The hundred-dollar mare could 
outlast the other and had to help her along toward the end of 
the drive. In time she was foundered and permanently stiffened 
and that was the reason she was sent to Mr. Sickles to be bred. 

We must now look after the two-year-old colt that was the sire 
of this mare. Robert L. Stevens, of Hoboken, owned the famous 
race mare, Betsey Ransom, and with others he bred from her 
the two fillies, Itasca and Frolic. lu 1837 these two mares were 
owned by Samuel Bradhurst, who manifested a sporting disposi- 
tion, very much against the wishes of his father. In 1837 he 
bred these two mares to imported Trustee, then standing at 
Union Course, Long Island, and the produce were Head'em 
and Fanny Ransom. It is not known what became of Fanny 
Ransom, but he continued to own Head'em for some years and 
ran him in 1841 at the Union Course and beat the imported colt 
Baronet, by Spencer. There seems to be no other trace of his 
running or his stud services. It was in 1840, therefore, that he 
jumped the fence and in 1841 that the dam of George M. Patchen 
was foaled. George Canavan, Mr. Bradhurst's. coachman, 
says there were no other foals of any description bred by Mr. 
Bradhurst. These facts were gleaned personally and separately 
from Tone and Canavan, and as they complement and sustain 
each other, they must be accepted as the best information extant 
on the breeding of this great horse. His dam was by Head'em, 
a son of Trustee, out of a mare by American Eclipse, a grandson 
of Messenger, and she was a pacer and a trotter. His grandam 
was a pacer of unknown breeding. 

In 1851 he was purchased for four hundred dollars from Mr. 
Sickles by John Buckley, of Bordentown, New Jersey, and a few 
months afterward he sold a half interest in him to Dr. Long- 
street, of the same place, and he remained their joint property till 
1858, when Mr. Buckley sold his half interest to Mr. Joseph Hall, 
of Rochester, New York. He commenced his remarkable career 
on the turf in 1855 and it continued till 1863. In 1858 he was 
engaged in the first race that gave him a national reputation. 
This was against no less a celebrity than Ethan Allen, and he was 
distanced, leaving Ethan with a clear title to the stallion cham- 
pionship. In 1860 he turned the tables on his old rival and beat 



THE CLAYS AND BASHAWS. 335 

him in straight heats in 2:25, 2:24, 2:29. The next week the 
contest was renewed and Patchen again won in straight heats, 
and this gave him the unchallenged right to the rank of the fast- 
est trotting stallion in the world. His triumphs, however, were 
as wide as the trotting turf and not limited to sex. He was able 
to beat and did beat all the best but the indomitable little Flora 
Temple, and although he beat her twice, she was too fast for him 
and beat him many times. It is not my purpose to give a history 
of his achievements. It is sufficient to say he made a record of 
2:23^, with thirty-four heats to his credit in 2:30 and less, and 
two miles in 4:51^. 

It cannot be said that he was a very great success in the stud 
as we now measure success. Four of his get were able to enter 
the 2:30 list, and among them was the great Lucy, with her, 
record of 2:18:j. Fifteen of his sons became the sires of sixty- 
two trotters and three pacers, and four of his daughters produced 
five trotters. It is hardly fair to compare the stud services of a 
horse of Patchen's generation with many of the great sons of 
Hambletonian, but at the same time we must not forget that 
Patchen was foaled the same year as Hambletonian. On the 
first of May, 1864, when Dan Pfifer was preparing him for the 
racing season then about to open, he died of a rupture, just as 
his sire had died. 

George M. Patchen Jr. (California Patchen) was a bay 
horse by the foregoing; dam Belle by Top Bellfounder, a grand- 
son of imported Bellfounder, of which little is known. He was 
bred by Joseph Eegan, Mount Holly, New Jersey, and taken to 
California 1862 by William Hendrickson; returned to New York 
1866, sold to Messrs. Halstead, Poughkeepsie, 1867, and by them 
to W. A. Matthews in 1869, and taken to San Jose, California; 
then sold to P. A. Finnegan, of San Francisco, and died the 
property of J. B. Haggin, Sacramento, 1887. He was cam- 
paigned quite extensively during the years 1866 and 1867 in 
the East, and carried away a good share of the winnings from 
the best. His best record was 2:27. In the stud he was more 
successful than his sire, which may be accounted for by his more 
numerous progeny and his longer life. From his own loins he 
put ten trotters into the 2 :30 list, and, although there was no 
Lucy among them, AVells Fargo made a record of 2:18|; Sam 
Purdy, 2:20^; Yanderlyn, 2:21, etc., showing a better average 
than the get of his sire. Ten of his sons got twenty-three trotters 



336 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and two pacers, and eleven of his daughters produced twenty- 
five trotters and three pacers. 

Several of the other sons of George M. Patchen left valuable 
and fast trotting progeny, and among them I will name Godfre}' 
Patchen, with nine trotters to his credit and his descendants 
breeding on; Henry B. Patchen, with seven to his credit; Seneca 
Patchen, Avith sixteen trotters and one pacer to his credit, per- 
haps more than he is honestly entitled to; Wild Wagoner, with 
four to his credit; and Tom Patchen with three and his family 
transmitting speed. 

In considering the founders of the Clay family, there are two 
or three important facts that should be kept in view, bearing 
upon the growth, or the decadence of the family. In a breeding 
sense this appears to be the longest line of developed speed that 
we have in any of our trotting families. While we know that 
there were developed trotters and pacers many years before 
Abdallah and Andrew Jackson were foaled, we are not able to 
connect them in lines of descent, generation after generation. 
As Andrew Jackson with his developed speed stands at the head 
of this line, the question naturally arises. Where did he get his 
ability to trot? The only answer we can give is, from the 
daughter of Messenger that was the grandam of his sire, and 
from the fast j)acer. Charcoal Sal, that produced him. Even if 
we accept the pedigree of Young Bashaw, with his Messenger 
grandam, when we get to Andrew Jackson we are a long way 
from the Messenger source of trotting speed; hence, we must 
look to the pacing speed of his dam — Charcoal Sal from Ohio — as 
the more probable source. 

Andrew Jackson was bred upon the converted pacer Surrey, 
and produced Henry Clay, then Henry Clay was bred upon 
Jersey Kate, of unknown blood, but a producer of trotting 
speed, and produced Cassius M. Clay. Then Cassius M. Clay 
was bred upon a mare "full of Messenger blood" and pro- 
duced Strader's Cassius M. Clay — the best of the Clay name 
by the record. Cassius M. Clay (the original) was also bred on 
"Dick Carman's mare" and produced the famous George M. 
Patchen. This Carman mare was by a running-bred son of 
Trustee. She was both a pacer and a trotter and her dam was a 
natural pacer. George M. Patchen was bred on the Regan mare 
and produced California Patchen. This mare was, practically, 
of unknown breeding. California Patchen was bred on Whiskey 



THE CLAYS AJsD BASHAWS. 337 

Jane and the produce was his best son, Sam Purdy. This mare 
Whiskey Jane was quite a trotter and she was undoubtedly pacing 
"bred, but I will not here enter into the details of her origin. 

We have here before us a condensed view of the trotting in- 
heritance of the Clay and the Patchen families from Andrew 
Jackson to Sam Purdy, and its most remarkable feature is its 
poverty in recognized trotting blood. On the maternal side, the 
pacing habit of action seems to prevail in almost every succeed- 
ing generation. The second thought is that the tribe has not 
held its vantage ground of the first and the longest line of de- 
veloped trotting speed. The third is that it has failed to trans- 
mit speed with uniformity, but rather sporadically. This may 
be accounted for by the general character and uncertainty of the 
maternal side, and suggests the question whether animals so bred 
can be relied upon to transmit with uniformity an inherit- 
ance received sporadically. From its place in the first rank as to 
time and popularity, this family has not been able to hold its 
own and it has declined to a place among the minor families of 
trotters and bids fair to be absorbed by tribes of stronger trotting 
inheritance. 



CHAPTEK XXV. 

AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AND NORMAN FAMILIES. 

Seely's American Star — His fictitious pedigree — Breeding really unknown — A. 
trotter of some merit — His stud career — His daughters noted brood mares — 
Conklin's American Star — Old Pacing Pilot — History and probable origin' 
— Pilot Jr. — Pedigree — Training and races — Prepotency — Familj' statistics, 
summarized— Grinnell's Champion, son of Almack — His sons and perform- 
ing descendants — Alexander's Norman and his sire, the Morse Horse — 
Swigert and Blackwood. 

Of all the hundreds of difficult and obscure pedigrees that I 
have undertaken to investigate and straighten out, I have given 
more time, labor and money to that of Seely's American Star 
than to any other horse. In 1867 I got his pedigree from a gen- 
tleman in Morris County, New Jersey, who claimed to have bred 
him, and this pedigree and the history accompanying it embracing 
several details that were interesting, I published it, at full 
length, in the Sjnrit of the Times. This represented the horse- 
as a light chestnut about fifteen hands high, with star and snip- 
and two white hind feet. He was represented to have been foaled 
1837 and to be by a horse called American Star, son of Cock of 
the Eock, by Duroc; dam Sally Slouch by Henry, the race horse;, 
grandam by imported Messenger. As there was no horse of that 
name, so far as I knew, by Cock of the Eock, but as there was 
one of that name by Duroc, I wrote to know whether this was not- 
the breeding of the sire, and the answer came that it might have^ 
been so. 

After the appearance of this pedigree in the "Eegister" I was 
greatly surprised that nobody believed it, and the more a horse- 
man knew of the horse and his history the more positive he was 
that it was a mistake. Several years passed away, and while I 
kept insisting it was true, the unbelievers became more persistent 
than ever in their opposition to the pedigree. The concensus of 
the opinions of horsemen seemed to be that the horse was part. 
"Canuck," and this was the view held by his owner, Edmund 
Seely, as long as he lived. At last the following story came to« 



A^ilERICAN" STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AND NORMAN. 339' 

me from different responsible persons, all of whom were person- 
ally cognizant of the facts they related, as follows: On a certain 
occasion a street contractor had a force at work, grading with 
shovels and carts, near the foot of Twenty-third Street, I think. 
New York City. Among the cart horses there was a Canadian 
stallion and a frisky, high-strung bay mare that wouldn't work 
kindly. One day during the noon hour, the "boys" for amuse- 
ment brought this stallion and mare together and in due time the 
mare proved to be with foal, and she was sent over to Jersey the 
next spring. The foal she there dropped was Seely's American 
Star. When I asked to whom the mare had been sent to be 
taken care of, the answer came back quickly naming the same 
man whom I had represented as the breeder. As the contractor 
had no use for the colt, as a matter of course, the keeper of the 
mare would take the colt for the keeping. There is nothing 
unnatural nor unreasonable in this story, and it bears a pretty 
strong resemblance to the way the dam of the famous George M. 
Patchen came into the world. 

When the horse was four or five years old he began to show a 
fine trotting step and he was sold to John Blauvelt, of New York, 
for a driving horse. His feet not being strong, in the course of 
a year or two he developed a couple of quarter cracks and he was 
sent back to the man who raised him to be cured. In the winter 
of 1844-5 he was sold to Cyrus Dubois, of Ulster County, New 
York, who kept him in the stud the seasons of 1845, 1846 and 
1847. His advertisement for the year 1847 reads as follows: 

" American Star is a chestnut sorrel, eight years old on the lltb day of April, 
1847, near 16 hands high, etc, , . . He was sired by the noted trot- 
ting horse Mingo, of Long Island, who was got by old Eclipse. American Star's 
dam, Lady Clinton, the well-known trotting mare of New Jersey, was 
sired by Sir Henry." 

Here we have the third pedigree of this horse, and now the 
question arises. Where did this pedigree come from? Cyrus 
Dubois is dead, but a living brother of his says this is the pedi- 
gree that Cyrus brought with the horse from New Jersey. As 
this same quasi-breeder was the man who delivered the horse to 
Dubois, the statement of the living brother comes very near 
proving that the first and the third of the pedigrees here given 
were the work of the same man. Again, in 1844, this same quasi- 
breeder kept this horse at Warwick and New Milford, in Orange 
County, New York, and nobody in that region seems to have. 



340 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ever heard of either of these pedigrees. And again, this qnasi- 
breeder wrote me that after Edmund Seely had brought the horse 
to Goshen he went to see him, and after fully identifying him as 
the same horse he had bred he gave the pedigree to Mr. Seely as 
he had given it to me. If this be true it is a very strange thing 
that Mr. Seely never seemed to know anything about it, but per- 
sisted in giving the pedigree as by a Canadian horse and out of a 
mare by Henry. Upon the whole, T long ago concluded tliat my 
first and earliest correspondent on the question of American 
Star's origin was unfortunate in having a mental organization 
that placed him "long" on the ideal, and "short" on the real. 

His stud services may be summarized as follows: In 1844 he 
was kept at Warwick and New Milford, Orange County, New 
York. In 1845, 1846 and 1847 he was in Ulster County, and on 
the borders of Orange. In 1848 and 1849 he was at Hillsdale, 
Columbia County, New York. In 1850, 1851, 1852 and 1853 he 
was at Goshen and other points in Orange County. In 1854 he 
was at Elmira, New York. In 1855, it is said on good authority, 
he was kept ten miles below Hudson. Others say he was at Pier- 
mont, Rockland County, that year. In 1856 he was at Mendota, 
Illinois. In 1857, 1859 and 1860 he was again in Goshen. In 
February, 1861, he died at Goshen, the property of Theodore 
Dusenbury. In Orange County his service fee ranged from ten 
to twenty dollars, and at last twenty-five dollars, and he was liber- 
ally patronized. An unusually large percentage of his foals were 
fillies, and he was essentially a brood-mare sire from the start. 
Opinions diifer very widely among horsemen as to his capacity 
for speed, some maintaining that he could trot in 2:35 while 
others insisted on placing him ten seconds slower. In trying to 
harmonize these conflicting views it is probably safe to conclude 
that, when fit, which seldom occurred in his whole life, his speed 
was about 2:40. He was always a cripple from defective feet 
and limbs, and his whole progeny were more or less subject to the 
same troubles. 

He left four trotters that barely managed to get inside the 2:30 
list and eight. sons that put sixteen inside of the list. But his 
strong point was in the producing character of his daughters. 
Thirty-six of these daughters left forty-five of their produce in- 
side of 2:30. The disparity in the producing power of the sexes 
in this family is very remarkable and, in a breeding sense, very 
instructive. In the light of what has been developed in this 



AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AND NORMAN. 341 

family in the past fifty years, we are certainly ready to form a 
safe estimate of its value as a factor in the combination that goes 
to make up a breed of trotters. Star mares gave us a Dexter and 
a Nettie, and all the world thought that was the blood that was 
to live on and on in the new breed. But, while Hambletonian 
was able to get great trotters from Star mares, he was not able to 
get, through their attenuated trotting inheritance, sons that 
would be as great as himself. To his cover Star mares produced 
no such great sires as George Wilkes, Electioneer, Egbert, Happy 
Medium, and Strathmore. In the instances of Dictator and 
Aberdeen there was a reasonable measure of success, but all the 
others — and there were many of them — proved comparative 
failures. There is a lesson taught here that any one can in- 
terpret. 

American Star (Conklin's) was a chestnut horse, foaled 
1851, and got by Seely's x\merican Star, and his dam has been 
variously represented, with nothing established as to her blood. 
He was bred by a Mr. Randall, of Orange County, and was among^ 
the first from his sire to attract attention. He came into the 
hands of E. K. Conklin when young, and was taken by him to 
Philadelphia, and was owned by him during his lifetime. He 
gave early promise of making a trotter, and from 1865 to 1868 he 
was on the turf, more or less, and left a record of 2:33. His stud 
services were confined to the region of Philadelphia till the year 
1872, when he was taken back to Orange County and died there. 
Three of his get entered the 2:30 list; two of his sons got one 
trotter each and four or five of his daughters produced one each. 

At one time the name "American Star" was very popular, and 
quite a number of stallions were so named that were bogus; but 
his son Magnolia put two in the 2:30 list; one son got three trot- 
ters, and three daughters produced five performers. His son 
Star of Catskill got two performers, and his son King Pharaoh 
got four pacers and all of them fast. The family has not grown 
strong either in numbers or in merit. It has been carried, so 
far, by the influences of stronger blood, and it seems destined to 
complete absorption and extinction in more potent strains. 

Pilot, the head of the Pilot family, was a black pacing horse, and 
of later years he has been generally designated as "Old Pacing 
Pilot." He was foaled about 1826, and nothing is known of his 
origin or his blood. From his make-up and appearance he was 
generally considered a Canadian, as was the custom at that time,. 



342 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and I think I have used this term myself in referring to the horse, 
but there is really no foundation for crediting him to that source. 
The earliest information we have of him is from an unpublished 
source, to the effect that he was well known to certain sporting 
men about Covington, Kentucky. He next appears in New 
Orleans, hitched to a peddler's cart, but really looking for a 
match as a green pacer. To promote this object. Major Dubois, 
a sporting man, was taken into the confidence of his owner, and 
it is said the horse showed him a mile in 2:26 with one hundred 
and sixty-five pounds on his back, and the major bought him for 
one thousand dollars. In 1832 Dubois sold him to Glasgow & 
Heinsohn, a livery stable firm of Louisville, Kentucky, and he 
remained the property of that firm till he died, about 1855. It 
has been asserted with some semblance of authority that he could 
trot as well as pace, but this seems to be wholly apocryphal, and 
on this point I am prepared to speak without hesitation or doubt. 
A large breeder in the vicinity of Louisville, whom I have learned 
to trust implicitly, through the intercourse of many years, has 
assured me repeatedly that he knew the horse and his master 
well, and that he had seen him very often, for years, that he 
would not trot, and that his master could not make him trot a step. 
On the occasion of a very deep fall of snow he was taken out to 
see whether that would not compel him to trot, and he went 
rolling and tumbling about with no more gait than a hobbled 
hog. 

He left a numerous progeny, most of them pacers, with some 
trotters. We know but little of their merits, as at that period 
pacing and trotting races were carried on, generally, on guerrilla 
principles, and no records kept, except at a few of the more 
prominent occasions. His fastest pacer, probably, was Bear 
Grass, and there is a little history here that will be interesting 
further on. My late friend, Edmund Pearce, had always, from 
■childhood, been a great admirer of the grand old saddle mare, 
Nancy Taylor. She had been bred to Old Pilot and produced a 
■colt foal, which Mr. Pearce bought when young and named him 
Bear Grass. This was the first piece of horseflesh he ever 
owned, and he didn't think he had ever owned a better one. 
He was amazingly fast, and could go away from all competitors, 
but unfortunately an accident befell him that ended his career 
before he reached maturity. Bear Grass had a half-sister 
■called Nancy Pope, being the daughter of Nancy Taylor, that 



AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AND NORMAN. 343 

was afterward bred to Old Pilot, and she produced the famous 
Pilot Jr., that was the fastest trotter from the loins of the old 
pacer. Pilot, Jr. took the diagonal form of the trot from his 
dam and never paced. It is worthy of noting that Nancy Taylor 
and Nancy Pope — mother and daughter — produced old Pilot's 
fastest pacer and fastest trotter. 

Pilot Jr. (Alexander's) was a grey horse, foaled 1844, "got 
by old Pacing Pilot; dam Nancy Pope, grandam Nancy Taylor." 
This is the literal version of his pedigree as given by his first 
owners and as given by W. J. Bradley and others who had him 
in charge year after year in the region of Lexington, according 
to the different advertisements, and no change ever appeared till 
the horse was bought and taken to Woodburn Farm. Then, for 
the first time we learned that Nancy Pope was got by Havoc, 
thoroughbred son of Sir Charles, and that Nancy Taylor was got 
by Alfred, an imported horse. This was not the work of Mr. R, 
A. Alexander, an honorable man, but the work of the profes- 
sional pedigree manufacturer, who exploited his inventive skill 
very widely through the early catalogues of that great establish- 
ment. As a matter of historic fact. Pilot Jr.'s dam was Nancy 
Pope, but nothing is known of her sire, and Nancy Pope was out 
of Nancy Taylor, about whose pedigree nothing whatever is 
known. But as the subject of Pilot Jr.'s pedigree is exhaus- 
tively treated in Chapter XXIX., the details need not be 
farther dealt with here. 

The training of Pilot Jr. commenced when he was five years 
old, and after the close of his stud seasons he was kept at it, in a 
moderate way, for several years, and it is said he never mani- 
fested any inclination to strike a pace. He was engaged in some 
races, and his advertisement claims he won several, giving the 
names of horses he had beaten, but the time made seems to be 
carefully avoided. He could probably trot in about 2:50 or a 
little better. He and all his family, so far as I can learn, were 
willful and hard to manage in their training, and were, there- 
fore, in danger of becoming unreliable, but they were fast for 
their day, and dead game campaigners. There is one particular 
in Avhich this horse seemed to surpass nearly all others and that 
was in his power to eliminate the running instinct and to plant 
the trotting instinct in his progeny from running-bred mares. 
It is doubtless true that many of those mares, so classed, were 
only running bred on paper; but the fact still remains, and it is 



344 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

supported by a sufficient number of authentic instances, to justify 
the conclusion that his potency in this direction was lemarkable. 
During the troublous times of the war many of his early pro- 
geny were lost or destroyed, but from his own loins he put eight 
performers in the 2:30 list and others not far away. Six of his. 
sons became the sires of forty-one performers, and eighteen of 
his daughters produced forty-one performers. Although the 
official records do not show that Pilot Jr. got any pacers, it is 
nevertheless true that he did get some very fast ones. But when 
we get past the period when the pacer was considered a bastard 
and kept out of sight, we meet with some astonishing facts. As- 
an example, take Miss Eussell, the greatest of all the Pilots. 
First, she produced a pacer that was changed to the diagonal 
instead of the lateral step, and then stood for years as the cham- 
pion trotter of the world. Second, her son Nutwood has placed 
twenty pacers in the 2:30 list; her son Mambrino Russell has. 
placed five there, and her son Lord Russell has j)laced five there. 
This brief and hasty exhibit of what the descendants of Miss- 
Russell are doing seems to upset ail the laws of heredity, provided 
always that her dam was a thoroughbred mare. The evidence 
that the breeding of this reputed "thoroughbred" mare is wholly 
unknown is considered in another part of this volume. 

In a few odd instances, in the male lines of descent from Pilot- 
Jr., the trotting and pacing instinct seem to be transmitted in. 
stronger measure than in any of the other minor families, but the 
day of its submersion is not far distant. The survival of the 
fittest is the law of Nature. 

Champion, the head of the Champion family, was a beautiful 
golden chestnut, sixteen hands high and without marks. He wa& 
bred by George Raynor,of Huntington, Long Island, and was foaled 
1842. He was got by Almack, son of Mambrino, by Messenger; 
dam Spirit, by Engineer Second, son of Engineer, by Messenger, 
and sire of the famous Lady Suffolk. This is enough Messenger 
blood to please the most fastidious, but I think there was still 
more beyond the Engineer mare. When eighteen months old 
this colt showed j)lienomenal speed when led behind a sulky, and 
when three years old he was driven a full mile to harness in 3:05, 
a rate of speed which, at that time had never been equaled by a 
colt of that age. This made him "champion" as a three-year- 
old and William T. Porter named him Champion. After this 
performance Mr, John Sniffin, a merchant of Brooklyn, bought 



AMERICAN" STAR, PILOT, CHAMPIOX, AND NORMAN. 845 

Tiim, and in June, 1846, Mr. AVilliam R. Grinnell paid two thou- 
sand six hundred dollars for him and took him to Cayuga County, 
New York. After keeping Champion in that county till the 
close of the season of 1849, Mr. Grinnell concluded to sell the 
horse, as in all that time he had not covered one hundred mares. 
Mr. Grinnell complained that the farmers did not appreciate the 
horse, and many of them failed to pay for his services. But the 
fault was not all on the part of the farmers, for the price, to 
them, was very high, and he was a very uncertain foal getter. 

In April, 1850, he was sent to New York and kept in the stable 
of Mr. Van Cott, on the Harlem road. He had been very badly 
handled, and Mr. Van Cott says he had been abused and ill- 
treated, and when he came to his place he was as vicious and 
savage as a wild beast. The horse was kept there for sale, and in 
liis daily exercise Mr. Van Cott says he could "show considera- 
bly better than 2:40 at any time." In 1851 he was sent over to 
Jersey and kept for public use at a fee of fifty dollars, by Samuel 
Taylor, at Newmarket, Metuchen, Boundbrook and Millstone. 
After making three or four seasons in the region of Boundbrook, 
in the year 1854, Mr. Grinnell, who still owned him, sold him to 
Mr. James Harkness, of St. Louis, Missouri, for about seven 
hundred and lifty dollars. On reaching St. Louis he proved to 
be as dangerous a§ ever, and no man dared to go into his stall, 
except Mr. Harkness and one assistant. In 1858 Mr. Harkness 
sold him to Thomas T. Smith, of Independence, Missouri, for 
one thousand dollars. He was there stolen by "jayhawkers" 
and taken to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he made two seasons 
and died 1864. Although he lived to be old, he left compara- 
tively few colts, but a large proportion of that few were of excel- 
lent quality and many of them trotters. 

Champion (Sco bey's also known as King's Champion) was the 
best son of Grinnell's Champion, the son of Almack, and he came 
out of a mare called Bird, by Redbird, son of Billy Duroc. He was 
foaled 1849, and was bred by Jesse M .Davis, then of Cayuga County, 
New York, and sold to David King, of North ville. New York, 
and by him in 1861 to Mr. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan. 
He was repurchased by Messrs. Backus, Scobey and Burlew in 
August, 1865, and soon became the property of Mr. C. Scobey 
^nd died his in May, 1874. It has been claimed this horse had 
speed and a record of 2:42 in 1857, but I have no data to deter- 
mine how fast he was. From his own loins he put eight per- 



346 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

formers in the 2:30 list, two of which were phenomenally fast, 
although their records do not show it. Here I allude to Nettie 
Burlew and Sorrel Dapper, more generally known as "The 
Auburn Horse." The latter was a long, leggy, light chestnut, 
with a tremendous stride, and Hiram Woodruff did not hesitate 
to say he was a faster horse than Dexter. This Champion was a 
sire of excellent quality, although but a few of his progeny were 
developed. He left six sons that were the sires of forty-four 
trotters, and seven daughters that produced nine performers. 

Champion (GtOGDing's) was a bright bay horse with black 
points, standing fifteen and three-quarter hands high. He was 
got by Scobey's Champion, dam the trotting mare Cynthia, by 
Bartlett's Turk, son of Weddle's imported Turk; grandam Fanny, 
by Scobey's Black Prince; great-grandam Bett, by Rockplanter, 
son of Duroc; great-great-grandam Kate, represented to be a. 
Messenger mare. He was foaled 1853, and was bred by Almeron 
Ott, Cayuga County, New York, and traded to Mr. Stearns, from 
whom he passed to his late owners, T. W. and W. Gooding, On- 
tario County, New York. He died June, 1883. This horse was 
peddled about in Seneca County at a fee of five dollars, and had 
a very light patronage among the farmers. At Irst he was sold, 
with difficulty, at Canandaigua, for three hundred dollars to the 
Messrs. Gooding, and he brought them a handsome income as- 
long as he lived. As his reputation as a sire of speed spread 
abroad, the quality of the mares brought to him improved, and 
among them were some with good trotting inheritance. Of his- 
progeny, seventeen entered the 2:30 list, the fastest in 2:21, and 
they were good campaigners. It is a remarkable fact that only 
one of his sons proved himself a trotting sire, and he left but a- 
single representative. On the female side of the house he was 
more successful, for six of his daughters produced seven per- 
formers. 

Charley B. was a bay horse, sixteen hands high, and was bred 
by Charles Burlew, of Union Springs, New York. He was foaled 
1869, and was got by Scobey's Champion, son of Champion, by 
Almack, and proved himself the best son of his sire. He was 
out of a mare well known as "Old Jane" that was the dam of 
Myrtle with a record of 2:25-^. Several pedigrees have been pro- 
vided for this mare that did not prove reliable, and they were all 
careful to endow her with plenty of Messenger blood. After 
searching for the facts through some years, the only version of it 



AMERICAN" STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION, AXD NORMAN". 347 

that seemed to be worthy of credence showed that her sire was a 
horse called Magnum Bonum and there it ended. In his racing 
career this horse was started sometimes nnder the name of 
"Lark." He has six heats to his credit in 2:30 and better, and 
a record of 2:25. From his own loins he has twenty-two trotters 
in the 2:30 list. Considering the respectable number this horse 
shows in the 2:30 list, his great nervous energy, his vigorous con- 
stitution, and the number of years he was liberally patronized in 
the stud, it is a most notable fact that he has but two sons that 
are producers. Six of his daughters have produced. As a propa- 
gator of speed in the coming generations, this horse seems to be 
even a greater failure than his half-brother, Gooding's Champion. 

Night Hawk was a chestnut son of Grinnell's Champion. 
He was bred by John S. Van Kirk, of Newark, New Jersey, and 
his dam was by Sherman's Young Eclipse, son of American 
Eclipse. He was foaled 1855-6. In 1862 Mr. Van Kirk took 
him to Kalamazoo, Michigan, thence to Paw Paw in 1872, and in 
1879 he was returned to Kalamazoo, owned by A. T. Tuthill. 
He was something of a trotter, and had a record of 2:36, under 
the name of Champion, when he was controlled by Mr. D. B. 
Hibbard, I think. He was shown at a State fair, held at Lans- 
ing, on a poor half-mile track, it is said, and trotted a mile in 
2:31^, and for this performance he received a piece of plate from 
the society testifying to this fact. He has but two representa- 
tives in the 2:30 list, and three of his sons have five trotters to 
their credit, while six of his daughters have produced seven per- 
formers. He lived to an old age. 

The merits and demerits of this family are very marked. The 
head of it seems to have possesssed great nerve force and an un- 
mistakable instinct to trot, but he was irritable and vicious in his 
temper. Both these qualities — the desirable and tlie undesirable 
alike — he seems to have transmitted to his offspring. I have seen 
Gooding's Champion, and he had the temper and disposition of 
his grandsire. It appears that the original Champion was a shy 
breeder, and I am disposed to think he inherited this infirmity 
from his sire, Almack, and whether the inability of his sons and 
grandsons to get sires of trotters may be accounted for from 
this cause would be a very difficult question to answer. There 
are several others of this family. East and West, that have single 
representatives in the 2:30 list, that I have not enumerated, but 
from the statistics, as they now stand, it seems probable that 



348 THE HORSE OF AMERICA.. 

whatever is good in this family will be swallowed up in other 
tribes that are more prepotent and positive in the trotting in- 
.stinct. 

NoRMAX, OR The Morse House. — This horse was originally 
named "Norman," but in later years he was more generally and 
widely known as The Morse Horse. His family is not large, but 
.some of his descendants have shown great speed and great racing 
qualities. His origin and breeding as given below have resulted 
from a wide and laborious correspondence, and, I think, can be 
.accepted as trustworthy. He was bred by James McNitt, of 
Hartford, Washington County, New York, who was a large 
farmer and distiller. He was foaled 1834, got by European; 
dam Beck, by Harris' Hambletonian; grandam Mozza, by Pea- 
<3ock, son of imported Messenger. He was fifteen and three- 
quarter hands high, a dark iron grey when young, and became 
white with age. He had plenty of bone, was handsome and a 
natural trotter. Something of the history of the animals enter- 
ing into this pedigree is important and I will try to give it in as 
brief form as possible. 

The breeder, Mr. McNitt, was in the habit of visiting Montreal 
at least once a year with the products of his farm and his di-s- 
tillery. On one occasion he brought back three horses Avith him, 
two "Canucks" and a very elegant grey horse that he called 
European, that was evidently somewhat advanced in years and 
was a little knee-sjjrung from the effects of hard driving. The 
two "Canucks" were fast trotters, but European could beat 
either of them. Mr, McNitt represented that this horse had been 
imported into Canada from Normandy in France and doubtless 
he believed it, but there were none of the French, characteristics 
about him. He was purchased in Montreal about 1829 and died 
in Washington County about 1836. The dam and grandam of 
the Morse Horse were bred by Mr. Joseph T. Mills, of the town 
of Argyle, in Washington County. Beck, the dam, was a bright 
bay mare about sixteen hands high. At weaning time Mr. Mills 
sold her to Robert Stewart, of Greenwich, and at three years old 
he sold her to Mr. McNitt. She was got by Harris' Hamble- 
tonian, when he was kept by John Williams, Jr. This is estab- 
lished quite satisfactorily and circumstantially. Mozza, the dam 
of Beck, was a chestnut mare, without marks, and was got by 
Peacock, a son of imported Messenger that was owned by Mr. 



AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPION AXD XORMAN. 349' 

Emerson in Saratoga County and was afterward burned up in his 
stable. This son of Messenger, called Peacock, was entirely new 
to me then I was investigating this pedigree in 1876 and I was 
disposed to reject it, but Mr. Mills certainly had a horse of that 
name and he represented him to be a son of Messenger, and he 
probably was, but I do not k^ioio that he was so bred. 

Mr. McNitt sold the colt at three years old to Martin Stover, 
who lived on his place, for eighty dollars; the next year Stover 
sold him to James Mills. In 1840 Mills sold him to Mr. Tefft 
and Zack Adams, and they sold him not long after to Philip 
Allen and Calvin Morse, of White Creek. Mr. Morse had him 
a number of years and when old sold him to Mr. Giant, and he 
died at Spiegletown in Renssalaer County, New York. He was 
a very perfect, natural trotter, and his speed was developed to 
some extent. In August, 1847 or 1848, Mr. Morse put him into 
the hands of John Case, of Saratoga Springs, the driver of Lady 
Moscow, to prepare him for the State Fair, at which he expected 
to meet the famous Black Hawk. Mr. J. L. D. Eyclesheimer, a. 
very intelligent gentleman, formerly of the region of Saratoga, 
wrote that while the horse was in Case's hands, he, with Mr. 
Morse, timed him a full mile in 2:40^. At the State Fair he was 
all out of fix and Black Hawk beat him in the second and tliird 
heats. He won the first heat in 2:52^. In the rivalries between 
stallions at agricultural fairs, however, is a very poor place to 
look for fair work and fair judgment, either from the stand or 
from the spectators. 

General Taylor was a grey horse, foaled 1847, got by the 
Morse Horse, dam the trotting mare Flora, a New York road 
mare of unknown breeding. He was bred by the brothers Eycles- 
heimer, then of Pittstown, New York. He was taken to Janes- 
ville, Wisconsin; 1850, and thence to California, 1854, where he 
trotted thirty miles against time in one hour forty-seven minutes 
and fifty-nine seconds. He also beat New York a ten-mile race 
in 29:41^. This horse has no representative in the 2:30 list, but 
his blood has always been very highly esteemed in California for 
its speed, but more especially for its game qualities. Honest 
Ance was another son of the Morse Horse that did a great deal 
of racing in California, although he has no record in the 2:30 
list. He was a chestnut gelding, and was managed by the 
notorious Jim Eoff, who was always ready to win or to lose as tha 
money seemed to suggest. 



350 THE HORSE OF AMEEICA. 

Norman (Alexander's) was a brown horse, foaled about 1846, 
got by the Morse Horse, son of European; dam one of a pair of 
brown mares purchased by John N. Slocum of Samuet Slocum, a 
Quaker of Leroy, Jefferson County, New York, and represented to 
be by Magnum Bonum. These mares passed to Mr, Russell, and 
from him to Titcomb & Waldron, who bred the better of the two to 
the Morse Horse, and the produce was iVlexander's Norman. This 
colt passed through several hands till he reached Henry L. Barker, 
of Clinton, New York, and about 1800, he sold him to the late 

E. A. Alexander, of Woodburn Farm, Kentucky. He died 1878. 
The original version of this pedigree, as put upon Mr. Alexander 
and advertised by him, as were many others, was wholly fictitious 
on the side of the dam. He was not retained long at Woodburn 
Farm. He does not seem to have been a uniform transmitter of 
speed, but when it did appear it was apt to tcT be of a high order. 
He left but two representatives in the 2:30 list, Lula, 2:15, with 
fifty-six heats, and May Queen, 2 :20, with twenty-five heats. He 
left four sons that became the sires of fifty-eight performers and 
thirteen daughters that produced nineteen performers. Such 
sons as Swigert and Blackwood speak well for his transmitting 
powers. 

Swigert was a brown horse, foaled 1866, got by Alexander's 
Norman, son of the Morse Horse; dam Blandina, by Mambrino 
Chief; grandam the Burch Mare, by Brown Pilot, son of Copper 
Bottom, pacer. He was bred at Woodburn Farm, Kentucky, 
and when young became the property of Eichard Eichards, of 
Eacine, Wisconsin, where he remained many years and passed to 

F. J. Ayres, of Burlington, Wisconsin. As a prepotent sire this 
horse stands high in the list of great horses. This may be ac- 
counted for in great part by the speed'-producing qualities which 
he inherited from his dam. I am not informed as to the amount 
of training he may have had, nor of the rate of speed he may 
have been able to show. He placed forty-four trotters and two 
pacers in the 2:30 list. Thirty-three of his sons became the sires 
of sixty-one trotters and fourteen pacers. Twenty-three of liis 
daughters produced twenty-one trotters and six pacers. From 
the number of his sons that have already shown their ability to 
get trotters, it is fair to presume that his name will be per- 
petuated. He died in 1892. 

Blackwood was a black horse, foaled 1866, got by Alexander's 
Norman, son of the Morse Horse; dam by Mambrino Chief; 



AMERICAN STAR, PILOT, CHAMPIOlf, AND NORMAN". 351 

graiidam a fast trotting dun mare, brought from Ohio, pedigree 
unknown. He was bred by D. Swigert, Spring Station, Ken- 
tucky, and foaled the property of Andrew Steele, of Scott County, 
Kentucky. At five years old he was sold to John W. Conley, and 
by him to Harrison Durkee, of ISTew York, and was afterward 
owned at Ticonderoga, New York. He made a record of 2:31 
when three years old, which, at that day, was considered phenom- 
enal for a colt of that age. His opportunities in the stud were 
not of the best, but nine of his progeny entered the 2:30 list; 
eleven of his sons got twenty performers, and twenty -five of his 
daughters produced thirty-seven performers. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOK FAMILIES. 

Blue Bull, the once leading sire — His lineage and history — His family rank — 
The Cadmus family — Pocahontas — Smuggler — Tom Rolfe — Young Rolfe- 
and Nelson — The Tom Hal family — The various Tom Hals — Brown Hal — 
The Kentucky Hunters — Flora Temple — Edwin Forrest — The Drew Horse 
and his descendants — The Hiatogas. 

Blue Bull, the real head of this family, was one of the most 
remarkable horses that this or any other country has produced. 
He was a light chestnut, just a little over fifteen hands high, 
with one hind pastern white and a star in his forehead. He was 
strongly built and his limbs were excellent, except perhaps a 
little light just below the knee. He was foaled 1858 and died 
July 11, 1880. He was bred by Elijah Stone, of Stone's Cross- 
ing, Johnson County, Indiana. For a time he was owned by 
Lewis Loder and Daniel Dorrel, before he passed into the hands 
of James Wilson, of Rushville, Indiana, who kept him many years 
and whose property he died. At one time he stood at the 
head of the list of all trotting sires in the world, and yet he- 
could not trot a step himself, but he could pace amazingly fast, 
and it was claimed he could pace a quarter in thirty seconds. 
He was the first and only horse that was ever able to snatch the 
scepter from the great Hambletonian family, but after a brief 
reign of a couple of years he had to surrender it again to that 
family, where, from present appearances, it is destined to remain. 

The breeding of this horse is very obscure, and after we have 
told all that is known about it we will not have given very much 
information. He was got by a large dun pacing horse that was 
known as Pruden's Blue Bull, and he by a blue roan horse 
known as Herring's Blue Bull, or Ohio Farmer. The latter was 
taken to Butler County, Ohio, from Chester County, Pennsyl- 
vania, and it has been said, without confirmation, that he was of 
Chester Ball stock. He was a large, strong farm horse, a natural 
pacer, as were many of his progeny, and dun and roan colors were 
very prevalent among them. He died the property of Mr. Mer- 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES, 353 

ring about 1S43. His son, Prnden's Blue Bull, was of a dun 
color and a natural pacer, but his dam has never been traced. 
He was large, strong, rather coarse, and had some reputation as a 
fast pacer, for a horse of his size, and his color was quite preva- 
lent among his progeny. He was bred in Butler County, Ohio, 
and about 1853 was taken to Boone County, Kentucky. In 1861 
he became the property of Gr. B. Loder, of the same county, and 
in 1863 he traded him to James Pruden, of Elizabethtown, Ohio. 

The pedigree of AVilson's Blue Bull, the head of the family on 
the side of the dam, is equally unsatisfactory so far as the blood 
elements are concerned. We know that this dam was called 
Queen, that she was bred by Elijah Stone, and that she was got 
by a horse called Young Selim, but we know nothing about 
Young Selim, We also know that the dam of Queen was called 
Bet, and that Mr, Stone bought her of Mr. Sedan, and there all 
knowledge ends. Since the days of the great racing progenitor, 
Godolphin Arabian, of whose origin and blood nobody, living or 
dead, had a single shadow of knowledge, down to the day of Wil- 
son's Blue Bull, no horse equally obscure in his inheritance has 
ever been able to prove himself really ""great as a progenitor of 
speed. 

In the days of Blue Bull's rising fame, and indeed till his death, 
there was developed such a condition of muddled morals as one 
seldom meets with in a lifetime. Whenever a horse of unknown 
breeding, in any one of three or four States, began to show some 
speeu, his owner at once called him a Blue Bull, and if he went 
fast enough to enter the 2:30 list, he was at once credited to Blue 
Bull by his friends, and they were all ready to fight for it. If 
the books of Blue Bull's services did not show that the dam of 
the "unknown" had ever been within a hundred miles of that 
horse, it was all the worse for the books. With a large number 
of men interested financially in Blue Bull stock, ready to claim 
everything in sight and anxiously looking for something more to 
appear, it became a most laborious task to keep this class of 
frauds out of the records. Another cause of dissent and dissat- 
isfaction among the "boomers" of Blue Bull blood was the final 
discovery of the breeder in Elijah Stone and that there was no 
"thoroughbred" blood in his veins. At that time a very large 
majority of the horsemen of the country honestly believed that 
all speed, whether at the pace or the trot, must come from the 
gallop. It was not the truth, therefore, that these people were 



354 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

looking for, but something to support that ignorant and stupid 
theory. 

A careful study of the statistics of this horse will teaoh a valu- 
able lesson. He put fifty -six trotters into the 2:30 fist, varying 
in speed from 2:30 to 2:17i, and five of this number in 2:20 or bet- 
ter. He also got four pacers with records from 2:24| to 2:16^. 
It thus appears that this horse, without any known trotting 
blood, got fifty-four trotters to four pacers, which clearly shows 
that an inheritance of speed at the pace may be transmitted at 
the trot, as well as the pace. When we come to his progeny, we 
find that forty-seven of his sons have to their credit one hundred 
and four performers, making an average of a little more than two 
each. These sons are all past maturity and some of them dead 
of old age, and not one of them has ever reached mediocrity in 
merit as a sire. He left seventy-seven daughters that have pro- 
duced one hundred and seven performers, and if we had time to 
trace out these performers we would find that they were gener- 
ally by strains of blood stronger and better than the blood of 
Blue Bull. While, therefore, we can acknowledge Blue Bull's 
greatness as a getter of speed from his own loins, we must 
acknowledge that his sons and daughters as the producers of speed 
are failures. It is possible that some representative of the tribe 
may spring up and restore the prestige of the family, but as 
the source is sporadic and as the country is filled up with trotting 
elements that are more prepotent, it is more likely to be swal- 
lowed up and lose its family identity. 

Cadmus (known as Irons' Cadmus) was the head of a very 
small family that occasionally developed phenomenal speed either 
at the pace or the trot. He was a chestnut horse nearly sixteen 
hands high, strong and active, with four white feet. He was 
foaled 1840 and was got by Cadmus, the thoroughbred son of 
American Eclipse, and was bred by Goldsmith Coffein, Red Lion, 
Warren County, Ohio. His dam was a chestnut pacing mare 
that Mr. Coffein got in a trade, from a traveler, and nothing was 
ever known of her breeding. A pedigree was shaped up for her 
that seemed to make her thoroughbred and her son took a prize 
on it once, as a thoroughbred, but it was wholly untrue. Mr. 
John Irons of the same county became joint owner in this horse, and 
he became widely known as "Irons' Cadmus." To close this part- 
nership he was sold, 1850, and taken to Richmond, Indiana; then 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MIlSrOR FAMILIES. 355 

to George Shepher, of Butler County, Ohio, and next to a com- 
pany in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he made two seasons, 
and was sold to St. Louis, Missouri, and died without further 
service, in 1858. From birth he was double-gaited, inclining 
more to the pace than to the trot. . From unskillful handling his 
gaits became mixed up so that it was never known whether he 
might have been able to show any speed or not. 

Pocahontas, the pacer, was the most distinguished of his get, 
ind if there were no others of merit from her sire this one alone 
would be sufficient to command a place in the volume. She was 
a large, strong chestnut mare with four white legs, a white face, 
and a splotch of white on her belly. She was bred by John C. 
Dine, of Butler County, Ohio, and was foaled 1847. Her dam 
was a very strong mare got by Probasco's Big Shakespeare, a 
horse over sixteen hands and very heavily proportioned, a very 
valuable farm horse with good action, many of whose tribe were 
disposed to pace. The grandam was also a descendant of Va- 
lerius, that was brought to Ohio from New Jersey. Pocahontas 
passed through several hands at very low prices and was used for 
-all kinds of heavy farming and hauling until she reached the 
hands of L. D. Woodmansee, when her speed began to be de- 
veloped. She was soon matched against Ben Higdon, the fast 
pacing son of Abdallah, and beat him in 2:32. In December, 1853, 
she was taken to New Orleans, and beat several celebrities there 
early the next spring. Before her last race it was discovered she 
was in fojil, and some two months afterward she dropped Tom 
Rolfe. In the autumn of 1854 she was brought to the Union 
Course, Long Island, and it was not till June, 1855, that her 
owners and managers could get a match with her. At last Hero, 
the famous son of Harris' Hambletonian, met her for two thousand 
dollars, he to harness and she to wagon. In the first heat she 
distanced the gelding in 2:17^, and it was maintained by her 
-driver that she could have gone at least five seconds faster, if it 
had been necessary. For racing purposes she was no longer of 
any value, for nothing would start against her. She was then 
sold and became a brood mare at Boston, Massachusetts, and 
produced the sires Tom Rolfe and Strideway, Pocahontas, 2:26f. 
and the dams of May Morning, 2:30, and Nancy, 2:23-|, thus rank- 
ing as a great brood mare. 

Shanghai Mary, that has become so famous as the dam of 
Oreen Mountain Maid, one of the very greatest of all brood 



356 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

mares, was probably a daughter of this same horse, Cadmus. This'. 
mare, Shanghai Mary, was a trotter of speed, not far from a 2:30 
gait, and she won some races, but she was hot-headed and unreliable. 
Notwithstanding continuous searches, "for years, her origin re- 
mained a profound mystery, until of recent date certain facts, 
point to Mr, Coft'ein as her breeder and Cadmus as her sire. 
This has not been established historically, but w^hen the circum- 
stances are understood and taken in connection with the internal 
evidences, which are amazingly strong, and had been pointed out. 
and applied to this sire long before the recent developments,, 
there remains hardly a moral doubt that she was by Cadmus. 
The fact that this mare is the maternal grandam of Electioneer, 
the greatest of all trotting sires to date, makes her pedigree a 
matter of special interest, and for details of the various investi- 
gations the reader is referred to Wallace's Monthly, and to Chapter 
XXIX. of this volume. 

Pocahontas seems to have produced but five foals that reached 
maturity: 1855, Tom Kolfe, of which hereafter; 1859, Young 
Pocahontas, by Ethan Allen, a very fast trotter; 1860, May 
Queen, by Ethan Allen; 18G1, May Day, by Miles Standish; 1863 
bay colt Strideway, by Black Hawk Telegraph, l^his was a very 
fast and promising young horse, and doubtless would have stood 
among the fastest stallions of his day, but he died on the very 
eve of his public appearance on the trotting turf. 

Tom Kolfe had a checkered existence from his conception. 
His dam, Pocahontas, was bred to Pugh's Aratus, by Abraham 
Pierce, her then owner, May 10, 1853, and ten days afterward 
she was sold without her new owner's knowing she had been bred. 
He was thus carried in his mother's womb, during her training 
and through her racing campaign in New Orleans, until a little 
over two months of the time he was dropped. During most of 
this period those handling the mare did not know she had been 
bred, and hence the story that Tom was a "catch" colt. He was 
a bay, about fifteen hands two inches high, and came to his speed 
Avith very little handling. In private trials, it is said, he had 
frequently shown a mile in 2:23. While on exhibition in a small 
ring at Dayton, Ohio, he met with an accident, from which he 
was ever afterward a cripple. In this condition however, he 
afterward made a record in 2:33^. His sire, Pugh's Aratus, was 
a large, handsome farm horse, sixteen hands two inches high, and 
weighing one thousand three hundred pounds. He was got hj 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHEK MIXOK FAMILIES. 357 

Phares' Aratus, out of a fast pacing mare. There is no evidence 
whatever going to show that Phare's Aratus was a son of Aratus 
by Director. The type of the family did not indicate the posses- 
sion of any running blood. Tom Rolfe put four trotters and 
tliree pacers, all with fast records, into the 2:30 list, and three 
of his sons left twenty-nine performers. In the latter years of 
his life he was sold by Mr. Woodmansee to Mr. Wesley P. Balch, 
of Boston, and died 1877. 

Young Rolfe was the best son of Tom Rolfe. He was a bay, 
foaled 1876, and came out of Judith, by Draco, son of Young 
Morrill, and she out of Lady Balch, by Rising Sun. He was bred 
by Wesley P. Balch, passed to C. H. Nelson, of Maine, then back 
to John Sheppard of Boston, and died 1884, when only eight 
years old. He was one of the best horses of his day, as a race 
horse, and his early death was universally considered a great loss 
to the breeding interests of the country. He has to his credit 
nine representative trotters in the 2:30 list. 

Nelson, the great son of Young Rolfe, was bred and owned by 
C. H. Nelson, Waterville, Maine. He is a bay horse, foaled 1882, 
and out of Gretchen, the daughter of Gideon, by Hambletonian, 
10, and she out of- the fast trotting mare Kate, by Vermont Black 
Hawk. This horse Gideon, the son of Hambletonian, was, like his 
sire, very strongly inbred to old Messenger, tracing through mares 
by Young Engineer and Young Commander, both grandsons of 
Messenger, to the William Hunter mare, that was by Messenger 
himself. When the pedigree of Nelson is compared with the 
pedigree of Hambletonian, according to the rules of arithmetic, 
it may be found to contain nearly or quite as much Messenger 
blood as Hambletonian possessed, but, unfortunately, we know 
nothing of the trotting capacity of the intervening mares. If 
we had a "One Eye" and a "Charles Kent Mare" coming next 
to the AVilliam Hunter mare, we would have much greater ex- 
pectations. But, as it is, when we consider the superlative 
capacity of Nelson himself, with his record of 2:09, and his nine- 
teen trotters and seven pacers already to his credit, it is probable 
he will found a large and valuable family. 

Through his son Blanco, sire of Smuggler, we have another 
notable line to Irons' Cadmus. Smuggler was in his day the 
champion trotting stallion, taking a record of 2:15^ when owned 
by Colonel Russell, of Boston, and driven by Charles Marvin, 
who after long and painstaking efforts converted him from his 



358 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

natural gait, the pace, to the trot. Wearing twenty-four ounces on 
each fore-foot to keep him at the trot, Smuggler defeated all 
the best horses of his day, including goldsmith Maid. He was 
by Blanco, out of a pacing mare of unknown blood. As might 
have been expected, he failed to found a great family, though 
fourteen of his get are standard performers, and twelve of his 
sons and seventeen of his daughters have produced thirty-eight 
performers. 

Tom Hal. — The original Tom Hal was taken to Kentucky, as 
early, probably, as 18'-i4, and as was the custom in those days, he 
was called a Canadian, like all other pacing horses. The tradition 
is that Dr. Boswell got him in Philadelphia and rode him home 
to Lexington, Kentucky. Another statement is that he was taken 
to Kentucky by John T. Mason, and this statement appears in the 
advertisement of the horse for the year 1828. As the horse was 
in the hands of William L. Breckenridge that year, and as his 
advertisement was practically a contemporaneous record, we 
must give the preference to the Mason representation. He was 
a roan horse, as I understand, a little over fifteen hands high, stout 
and stylish. He was very smooth and pleasant in his gait and a 
very fast pacer. He was for some time in the hands of Captain 
West, of Georgetown, Kentucky, and then passed to Benjamin N. 
Shropshire, of Harrison County, and after some years he died his 
property. 

Bald Stockhstgs, also known as Lail's Tom Hal, was a chest- 
nut horse with a bald face and four white legs. He Avas foaled 
early in the "forties," and was got by the original Tom Hal, and 
his dam was by Chinn's Copperbottom. He was bred by Hig- 
gins Chinn, Harrison County, kept for a time by John Lucas, 
and owned by Mr. Lail, of the same county. He was one of the 
prominent links between the old and the new, and was a fast 
pacer. 

Sorrel Tom was a son of Bald Stockings (Lail's Tom Hal) and 
bore the same color and markings. He was bred and owned by 
John Shawhan, of Harrison County, Kentucky. His dam was a 
grey mare from Ohio, of unknown breeding. He was kept at 
Falmouth, Indiana, the seasons of 1857 and 1858, and was very 
widely known in that region as "Shawhan's Tom Hal." He was 
quite a large horse, and to take the description as given him, 
"he could pace like the wind." He was then taken back to 
Kentucky, leaving a multitude of good colts behind him, among 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES. 359 

them the famous pacing gelding, Hoosier Tom, 2:19^. One of 
his Indiana sons passed into the hands of William Gray, of Rush 
County, Indiana, and became known as Gray's Tom Ilal. Noth- 
ing is known of the dam of this horse. He was the sire of Little 
(Jipsey, trotter, 'Z:22, and Limber Jack, pacer, 2:18^, besides six 
daughters that produced nine performers. 

About 18G;3-4 Mr. Shropshire, Jr., a son of the owner of the 
original Tom Hal, brought a little roan Tom Hal horse to Rush- 
ville, Indiana, where he stood a number of years and was known 
as Shropshire's Tom Hal. This horse was probably by Lail's 
Tom Hal, as he was too young to be by the original of the name. 
He was a fast pacer, but nothing is known of his progeny or his- 
tory. The locating of this Indiana branch of the family is of 
particular interest, for it shows a concentration of pacing blood 
that was doubtless a strong reinforcement to Blue Bull. 

Tom Hal (Kittrell's) was a large bay horse and a pacer, 
bought by Major M. B. Kittrell in 1850 of Simeon Kirtly, near 
Centerville, Bourbon County, Kentucky, and taken to Middle 
Tennessee. His sire was rejaresented to have been a large pac- 
ing bay horse that was brought from Canada, thereby implying 
that he was the original of the name, brought to Kentucky. 
While it is possible that the original Mason horse may have been 
the sire of Major Kittrell's horse, the size and color of that horse 
do not correspond with what has been accepted as facts. It is 
altogether more probable that the sire of the Tennessee horse was a 
son of the original Tom Hal, as the roan color seems to be 
strongly fixed in all branches of the family. 

Tom Hal Jr. (Gibson's) was a roan horse, foaled 1860. Got 
by Kittrell's Tom Hal; dam (bred by John Leonard), by Adam's 
Stump, pacer; grandam said to be by Cummings' Whip, pacer. 
Bred by H. C. Saunders, Nashville, Tennessee; kept a number 
of years by T. D. Moore, Petersburg, Tennessee, afterward 
owned by Polk Bros, and Major Campbell Brown, of Springhill, 
Tennessee. Adams' Stump was a roan horse and a fast pacer 
and he was not only the sire of Julia Johnson, the dam of this 
horse, but also of the dam of Bonesetter. He died of old age, 
July, 1890. The strong concentration of pacing blood in his 
veins gave him unusual power in trinsmitting his inherited habit 
of action. He put fourteen representatives in the 2:30 list, and 
what is unprecedented, they are all pacers. 

Brown Hal is a brown horse, as his name indicates, foaled 



360 THE HORSE Of AMERICA. 

1879, got by Gibson's Tom Hal; dam the pacing mare Lizzie, the 
dam of the pacer Little Brown Jug, by John Netherlands son of 
Henry Hal; grandam Blackie, by John Hal, son of John Eaton; 
great-grandam Old March, by Young Conqueror. Bred by R. 
H. Moore, Culleoka, Tennessee, passed to M. C. Campbell and 
Campbell Brown, Springhill, Tennessee. Here we have a still 
stronger intensification of the pacing instinct, for this horse not 
only has a pacing record himself of 2:12-^, but he put twenty of 
his progeny into the standard list, and all of them pacers. It is 
not shown by the Year Book that either tliis horse or his sire has 
any trotters to his credit, but it can hardly be doubted that some 
of their progeny took naturally to the diagonal trot, and not 
showing encouraging speed, were never developed. 

If the question were asked, ''What is to result from this in- 
tensely pacing family?" it would be very difficult to frame a satis- 
factory answer. At present this family shows all the vigor of 
youth in its new develoijment, but, judging by others that have 
come and gone, it too, in its turn, will be submerged in more 
prepotent strains, that will more nearly meet the wants of their 
masters. The pacer has been lifted from obscurity and made the 
equal of the trotter as a race horse; his blood has contributed to 
an unknown extent in giving speed to the trotter, but he must be 
as good a horse for all uses as the trotter, or nobody will want him. 

Ken'TUCKY Hunter, the head of the family bearing this nama 
that, at one time, was very prominent in Central New York, 
was foaled 1822, and was bred by Louis Sherrill of New Hart- 
ford, New York, and was got by Watkins' Highlander. His 
dam was a mare bought from a couple of dealers who were pass- 
ing through New Hartford with some six or seven horses for 
sale, and they represented this mare to have been brought from 
Kentucky. On this representation she was called "a Kentucky 
mare." She was a fine saddle mare and for this reason she was 
used chiefly for that service. From her superiority as a saddler, 
I think it is safe to conclude she was a pacer and could go the 
saddle gaits. Kentucky Hunter was a chestnut horse, a little 
above medium size. Mr. Sherrill sold him when young to 
Messrs. Bagg and Goodrich who kept him two years and sold him 
to William Ferguson, of Oriskany Falls, New York, and Mr. 
Ferguson continued to own him till he died in 1838. 

During the lifetime of this horse the pacing gait was considered 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES. 361 

an evidence of bad breeding, and this prejudice has continued for 
many years. The saddle was going out of use and wheels were 
coming in. After Flora Temple electrified the trotting world, 
writers had a great deal to say of her origin and family, but no 
one ever intimated that her grandsire was a pacer. From sources 
that I have no reason to doubt, I have been informed he was not 
only a pacer, but a fast pacer. This habit of actibn was not 
popular with breeders, and Mr. Ferguson kept it concealed as 
much as possible. When the pacer, Oneida Chief, from his own 
loins, was beating Lady Suffolk, three miles in 7:44, to saddle, 
and many of the other cracks of that day, his sire was dead and 
nothing was then to be made by proclaiming from the housetops 
that Oneida Chief was by old Kentucky Hunter. 

Very little is known of Watkins' Highlander, the sire of this 
horse. He was brought to Whitestown, New York, 1821, by 
Julius Watkins, from Connecticut. Some of the older men who 
knew the horse insist that Mr. Watkins represented him to be 
by a son of imported Messenger, and out of Nancy Dawson by 
imported Brown Highlander. This is possible, indeed probable, 
but it is not established. 

Bogus HuNTER.was one of the younger sons of Kentucky 
Hunter. He was a cliestnut horse of good size and came out of 
a mare by Bogus. But little is known of this horse, and that 
little is rendered still Vnore uncertain by the unreliable character 
of his owners, the Loomis bi'others, of Sangerfield, New York. 
It is certain, however, that a horse owned by the Loomises and 
called by this name was the sire of the famous world beater. 
Flora Temple. This fact rests upon the testimony of Mr. 
Samuel Welch, a reputable and trustworthy man who owned the 
dam of Flora and had her coupled with this horse, under his own 
eye. 

Edwin Forrest, the most prominent representative of this 
family, was a large and rather loosely made bay horse, foaled 
1851, got by Young Bay Kentucky Hunter, son of Bay Kentucky 
Hunter, that was by the original Kentucky Hunter. His dam, 
Doll, bred by Mrs. Crane, of Whitestown, Oneida County, New 
York, was by Watkins' Highlander; grandam a chestnut mare 
owned in the Crane family, by Black Kiver Messenger, son of 
Ogden's Messenger. The identification of this grandson of im- 
ported Messenger was secured after the appearance of the fifth 
volume of the "Register." This same mare, Doll, the next year 



362 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

produced Wamock's Highland Messenger, that was taken to Ken- 
tucky, and was a valuable element in the road -horse blood of that 
State. Edwin Forrest was bred by Barnes Davis, Oneida, Madison 
County; owned two years by H. L. Barker, of Clinton, New 
York, sold to Marcus Downing, of Kentucky, by him to Wood- 
burn Farm, and after a time he passed to a company at Keokuk, 
Iowa, and then to George W. Ferguson, of Marshalltown, Iowa, 
where he was burned up in 1874. 

It has been said this horse was a pacer and converted to a trot- 
ter, but this does not seem to be sustained by the facts. He was 
shown as a three-year-old at the Oneida County Fair, and he was 
then a square natural trotter and was considered very fast, for 
he was fully able to distance all the other colts of his age. The 
story of his being a pacer probably grew out of the fact that 
there was a strong pacing strain in the family, as the original 
Kentucky Hunter was undoubtedly a pacer. Many of the Ken- 
tucky Hunters were speedy travelers and a few of them were 
fast. Black Eiver Messenger was a horse of very wide local 
reputation for the superiority of his progeny as rapid travelers. 
The union of the Messenger blood with pacing blood produced 
excellent results in this, as well as in thousands of other cases. 
As was the common usage before the establishment of the "Trot- 
ting Eegister," this horse was advertised with two fictitious crosses 
added to his pedigree — his grandam was given as by Duroc, and 
his great-grandam as by imported Messenger. Only two from 
his loins were able to enter the 2:30 list; six of his sons got seven 
performers and twelve of his daughters produced fifteen trotters. 

Skenandoah (afterward called Kentucky Hunter) was a bay 
horse, foaled 1854, got by Brokenlegged Hunter, son of the orig- 
inal Kentucky Hunter; dam not clearly established. He was 
bred by Mr. Sykes, near Canastota, and passed through several 
hands to Henry Dewey, of Morrisville, New York, who trotted 
him in a number of races in Central New York and then took 
him to California, where he was kept in the stud a number of 
years under the name of Kentucky Hunter, and died there 1871. 
He got one trotter; one son that left two performers and seven 
daughters that left nine performers. 

Drew Horse, commonly called "Old Drew," was a brown bay 
horse, foaled 1842, and was about fifteen and one-quarter hands 
high and well-formed. He was bred, or rather raised, by Hiram 



THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES. 363 

Drew, then of Exeter, Maine, who kept him all his life. The 
story of his siipposed sire was one of those weakly devised fictions, 
so common in that day, and especially where the Canadian border 
could be made effective in rounding it out. To show that the 
mysterious colt that became the sire of Drew Horse was "thor- 
oughbred," the stereotyped "British Army officer" is made 
jivailable, for the hundredth time, as having brought a mare 
from England in foal to a thoroughbred horse, the foal was 
dropped and at three years old he was traded by the aforesaid 
"officer" to the party that brought the colt to Maine. Unfor- 
tunately for the story, the party who made the trade and the 
•story had a bad memory, and sometimes he located the trade at 
St. Johns and sometimes at Fredericton, New Brunswick. But 
the fiction served its generation and was not exposed till long 
after the Drew Horse was dead. The facts in the matter seem 
to be simply these: a stallion colt was running in a pasture ad- 
joining Mr. Drew's pasture, and that colt got over the fence, was 
found with Mr. Drew's mare, and in due time she dropped the 
colt known as the "Drew Horse." The fence-breaker was soon 
after made a gelding and sold, and nothing is known of him, 
either before or after this escapade. The dam of the Drew 
Horse was a bay mare about fifteen and one-half hands high, 
foaled about 183G, and bred by Mark Pease, of Jackson, Maine. 
Her sire was called Sir Henry and was represented to be by a son 
of American Ecliiise, that was taken to Maine from Connecticut 
by Dr. Brewster and sold to General F. W. Lander. She was 
known as Grace Darling and afterward as Boston Girl. She was 
on the turf and was quite a trotter, and it is claimed she made a 
record of 2:37, and her dam was Lady Jane by Winthrop Mes- 
senger. While I don't know what the inheritance of this horse 
was on the side of his sire, I do know that he had a trottinar 
inheritance on the side of his dam. He lived till 1866 and then 
had to be. destroyed on account of a broken leg. 

This horse was never trained, and it is not known what he 
might have been able to do as a trotter. He put two of his sons 
in the 2:30 list, Dirigo and General McClellan. Of his sons, two 
put five trotters and three pacers in the list, and of his daughters 
left six representatives there. Besides these he left a number of 
others with records a little short of the limit of speed, and many 
without records that were fast and very game roadsters. 

Dirigo, at first called George B. McClellan, under which name 



3G4 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

he made his record, was the best son of Drew Horse. He was a 
brown horse, and in appearance much like his sire. He was 
foaled 1856 and came out of a mare that has not been traced, but 
was doubtless a pacing mare. He was bred by Horace McKinney, 
Monroe, Maine, and passed to David Quimby, of Corinna, Maine, 
and died 1884. He made his record of 2:29 in a single heat and 
never was on the track again. Four trotters and two pacers by 
him entered the 2:30 list. Two of his sons became the sires of 
three trotters, and five of his daughters each produced a per- 
former. He left others with and without records that were fast 
and stylish drivers. 

Hiram Drew, at first called Bay Morgan, was a son of Old 
Drew, and his dam was a small bay mare, owned near Bangor and 
said to be of Morgan blood. This horse was on the turf some 
years and was engaged in some locally important contests, but 
never was able to make himself standard either by his own or the 
performance's of his progeny. His best performance, I believe, 
was 2:31|. 

WiNTHROP was a bay horse, foaled 18G4, got by Drew Horse; 
dam by the Eton Horse and grandam by Stone or Simpson's Mes- 
senger. He was bred by E. J. Greene, Newport, Maine; taken 
to California 1870, and there owned by Judge W. E. Greens and 
L. E. Yates, of Stockton. It does not appear that he ever was 
trained, and consequently has no record. His opportunities, 
probably, were not very great, but whether or not, he was not 
successful in the stud. He left one trotter and one pacer and 
the dams of one trotter and one pacer. 

This family never was large, and its popularity was up and 
down just as a few individuals might be successful or unsuccess- 
ful on the turf. To start with, it had a very weak inheritance 
of trotting instinct, and that weakness did not strengthen in suc- 
ceeding generations. Of late years it has failed to maintain 
itself as a trotting family, and is now practically out of the 
reckoning of trotters. 

Hiatoga, generally known as Rice's Hiatoga, was a bay pac- 
ing horse and was bred in Rockingham County, Virginia, and 
taken to Fairfield County, Ohio, by Edward Rice, some time about 
1836. He had the reputation of being a fast pacer, and was sold 
to William Shiruo, of the same county, and by him to William 
Munger, in Avhose possession he died. He was got by a horse 



THE B-LUB BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES. 365 

Icnown in Virginia as Hiatoga, and also American Hiatoga, but 
nothing is known of the blood of his dam. Nothing is known of 
his speed or his progeny except through the two sons here given. 

Hiatoga, generally designated as '"Old Togue/' was got by 
Rice's Hiatoga; dam by Thunderbolt, grandam by Black or Bold 
Rover. He was foaled 18-13 and was bred by David W. Brown, of 
Perry County, Ohio; sold 1849 to John Joseph, Kirkersville, 
Ohio, where he made some seasons and was sold 1855 to Alvah 
Perry, Lancaster, where he remained till 1863, and was sold to 
Harvey Wilson, and two years later to William McDonald, 
€olumbus, Ohio, where he died 1871. This horse left excellent 
stock and many of them fast pacers, but they never cut much 
figure on the turf. 

Hiatoga (Hanley's) was a bay pacing horse of good size and 
quality and was very popular as a sire. He was foaled 1849, got 
by Rice's Hiatoga; dam an elegant bay mare sixteen hands high 
and represented to be of "Sir Peter and Eclipse blood." This 
mare was formerly given as byFiretail, but the present rendering, 
whatever it may mean, comes from sources Avith opportunities 
to know. He was bred by John Bright, of Fairfield County, sold 
to Joseph Watt, and taken to Harrison County and then to Jeifer- 
son County, and sold to James Davis Tweed. He next passed 
through the hands of David Rittenhouse and Moses Hanley, of 
Hopedale, Ohio, and after three or four years in the stud Mr. 
Hanley sold him to David Rittenhouse, John Wiley and Samuel 
Hanley for two thousand five hundred dollars, and he died the 
property of Mr. Rittenhouse near Hopedale, Ohio, 1858. Two 
of his progeny entered the 2:30 list; three of his sons left thir- 
teen performers, and three daughters produced five. 

Hiatoga (Scott's) was a bay pacer foaled 1858, got by Han- 
ley's Hiatoga; dam by Blind Tuckahoe (pacer); grandam by Con- 
sul. This horse was quite fast and paced under the name of 
Tuscarawas Chief. He was the best of the family and was bred 
and owned by Samuel Scott, East Springfield, Jefferson County, 
Ohio. He put five trotters and four pacers in the 2:30 list; seven 
of his sons and seventeen of his daughters were producers. 

The Hiatoga family seems to have no trotting inheritance ex- 
cept from the pacer. It is a useful family and still has vitality. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 

Characteristics of the Morgans — History of the original Morgan — The fabled 
pedigree — The true Briton theory — Justin Morgan's breeding hopelessly 
unknown — Sherman Morgan — Black Hawk — His disputed paternity — His 
dam called a Narragansett — Ethan Allen — His great beauty, speed and 
popularity — The Flying Morgan claim baseless — His dam of unknown 
blood — His great race with Dexter — Daniel Lambert, the only successful 
sire of the Black Hawk line. 

Fifty years ago there was no family of horses so popular as 
the "Morgans." They were carried into all parts of the country 
at high prices and they gave their purchasers general satisfac- 
tion. They were small, perhaps not averaging over fourteen and 
a half hands high, but compact, trappy movers and had most 
excellent dispositions. Many of them were ideal roadsters, 
where speed was not in great demand, for they were kindly,, 
tractable and always on their courage. Many of them carried 
themselves in excellent style, and notwithstanding their diminu- 
tive size, it is not probable we will ever again see a better tribe of 
every-day, family horses. In all their outline and in every linea- 
ment they were the very opposite of the blood horse, and when 
bred on any strain outside of their own family, they almost uni- 
versally failed to impress their own characteristics on their pro- 
geny. This failure I observed with deep regret more than forty 
years ago. The step could be extended and the speed increased 
by crossing with the long striders, but in securing this we lost 
the Morgan, In advance of their general distribution they had 
the misfortune to be heralded as great trotters, and in this re- 
spect, at least, they failed of meeting expectations. They went, 
largely, into the hands of inexperienced men, who knew nothing 
about how to cultivate speed, and the little, short, quick steps of 
their new trotters gave them all the sensations of going fast, 
without the danger incident to rapid traveling. In regard to the 
matter of speed, through the overzealous and not too conscientious- 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 36? 

editors and others to say nothing of the advertisements of those 
who had them for sale, they suffered greatly by too much praise. 
The result is that the original type has been extinguished, and it 
is doubtful whether a fair specimen could be found, even among 
the mountains of New England. Next to the injury which the 
family sustained from the exaggerated claims of speed put for- 
ward by its too sanguine friends, there was another and even 
greater injury from the asburd and foolish claims made for his 
blood. It is impossible to make a thinking and sensible man be- 
lieve that a little hairy-legged "nubbin" of a pony, weighing eight 
hundred and fifty pounds, hired for fifteen dolhxrs a year to drag 
logs together in a clearing, at which employment he was a great 
success, had the blood of the I'ace horse in his veins. This was 
always a stumbling block to my immature enthusiasm for the 
Morgan horse. From an experience of a great many years and 
from the developments of horse history during that time, I find 
the "stumbling block" no longer worries me, for it has rotted 
away and disappeared. Although the family has ceased to exist 
as a factor in current horse history, it had a history in the past; 
and, as a historian, I must consider its origin as well as the 
deeds it has accomplished or failed to accomplish. 

Mr. Justin Morgan, the central figure in this investigation, 
was born in West Springfield, 1747, where he married and lived 
till 1788, when he removed to Randolph, Vermont, where he died, 
March, 1798. He was a reputable citizen, fairly well educated 
for his time, and taught school for a living. He owned a house 
and lot in his native town, where he kept a wayside house of en- 
tertainment, and during the early summer he usually had a stal- 
lion to keep on the shares. In the spring of 1785 he had charge 
of the horse True Briton, or Beautiful Bay, and I will here 
add that three years later, John Morgan, Jr., had charge of the 
same horse at Springfield, for the seasons of 1788 and 1789. 
This John Morgan, Jr , removed to Lima, New York, late in 
1790 or early in 1791. Justin had sold his place in West Spring- 
field to Abner Morgan, on long payments, and in the summer of 
1795 he came back to West Springfield to collect some money 
that was due him, presumably on the price of his former home, 
but he failed to get money and took two colts instead. One was 
a three-year-old gelding and the other was a two-year-old bay 
colt, entire. He led the three-year-old with a halter and the two- 
year-old followed. The date of this visit to the old home is the 



368 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

key to the main question to be settled, and it is fixed by Justin 
Morgan, Jr., then a lad of the right age to remember such things, 
and by Soloman Steele and Judge Griswold, who fix the date in 
the late summer of 1795. The horse was sold and resold and 
sold again, as a foal of 1793, and that date never left him till he 
died in 1821. I look upon this date as perfectly immovable, and 
every attempt that has been made to overthrow it has not been 
based on any reasonable evidence, nor prompted by a desire to get 
at the truth, but only to make a fictitious sire a possibility. This 
was the original Morgan Horse, and this date was thoroughly 
fixed by Linsley, without knowing that it upset the pedigree he 
had labored so hard to establish. After a lapse of fifty years an 
attempt was made to fix up a pedigree for the "Original Morgan 
Horse," claiming that he was got by True Briton or Beautiful 
Bay — represented to be a great race Rofse, stolen from the great 
race horse man. Colonel De Lancey, in the Kevolutionary War. 
I must, therefore, consider, briefly, this part of the fiction. 

First — As a starting point in the pedigree, it is assumed that 
the race-horse in question was stolen, during the War of the Revo- 
lution, from James De Lancey, perhaps the largest and most 
widely known of all the colonial horsemen of that day. He was 
the first man to imjDort race horses into this colony, and his name 
and the fame of his horses were discussed everyAvhere. He was 
very rich, in politics a Tory, and on the eve of hostilities he sold 
out every horse he owned, of whatever description, went back to 
England and never returned. This disposes of the false assump- 
tion that the sire of the original Morgan horse was stolen from 
him. 

Second — There was another James De Lancey, cousin to the 
preceding, and not a rich man, who was colonel of a body of 
Tory cavalry operating in Westchester County from 1777 to the 
close of the war in 1782. It is not known whether he ever owned 
a race horse in his life, but it is certain he was a dashing fighter, 
and at the head of the cowboys he was known to the inhabitants 
of all that region. His name is not to be found anywhere in con- 
nection with horses. He bore, in full, the same name as the dis- 
tinguished horseman, and was mistaken for him, although he was 
on the other side of the ocean. 

Third— It is claimed that "one Smith" stole the horse in 
question from Colonel De Lancey and sold him to Mr. Ward, of 
Hartford, Connecticut, who kept him a few years and sold him 



THE BLACK HAWK OH MORGAN" FAMILY. 369 

to Selah Norton, of the same place, and remained his till he died. 
Who was this "one Smith" and where did be belong? Where is 
the evidence that this "one Smith'' stole a horse from Colonel 
De Lancey? 

Fourth— In the New York Packet, then published at Fishkill, 
under date of October 19, 1780, we fiiid the following: "Last 
week Lieutenant Wright Carpenter and two others went down 
to Colonel James De Lancey's quarters and lay in wait for his 
Appearance. He accordingly came and having tied his horse at 
the door, went into the house; upon which Carpenter seized the 
horse and mounted. When De Lancey discovered him, he im 
mediately alarmed his men, who pursued him to White Plains, 
but in vain," etc., etc. This Lieutenant Carpenter was a dash- 
ing young fellow and was promoted next month to the j^osition 
of first lieutenant in Captain Lyons' company, of the Second 
Kegiment of New York Militia, of Westchester County, and still 
commanded by Colonel Thomas. This is the man who stole the 
horse, this is the contemj^oraneous evidence of it, and "one 
Smith" had nothing to do with it. 

In these four points we have what may be considered the first 
chapter of this investigation and, as will be readily seen, each of 
them must be fatal to the pretentious claim that has been main- 
tained for about a hundred years. Avoiding all circumlocution, 
I think it is safe to say that this so-called pedigree did not orig- 
inate this side of Hartford. The Second Regiment of New York 
Militia, called "The Skinners," was made up of Westchester 
County men, and as Colonel De Lancey had been sheriif of that 
county, everybody knew him and knew that he was not the race 
horse James. We must, therefore, look further on for the time 
when and the person by whom this pedigree was manufactured. 

In 1784 this horse was advertised at Lanesboro, Massachusetts, 
under the name of Beautiful Bay, and no attempt was made to 
give a pedigree or origin of the horse. 

In 1785 he was at West Springfield, Massachusetts, in charge 
of Justin Morgan, still called Beautiful Bay, and still no pedi- 
gree. 

In 1788 and 1789 he was in charge of John Morgan, Jr., of 
Springfield, Massachusetts, and here, for the first time, he is 
designated as "the famous full-blooded English horse, called 
True Briton or Beautiful Bay," but no pedigree is given. 

In 1791 he was advertised at East Hartford, Connecticut, by 



370 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

his owner, Selali Norton, and his pedigree is here given for the 
first time as follows: "True Briton, or Beautiful Bay, got by im- 
ported Traveler, dam De Lancey's racer." After advertising the 
horse for seven years without a pedigree, at last Mr. Selah Nor- 
ton manufactures one and gives it over his own signature. 

In 1793 he is again called Beautiful Bay, but no pedigree, at 
South Hadley, Massachusetts. 

In 1794 and 1795 he was kept at Ashfield, Massachusetts, by 
Mr. Norton himself, and called Traveler, and his pedigree is 
again given in amended form as follows: "Sired by the famous 
old Traveler, imported from Ireland, dam Colonel De Lancey's 
imported racer." 

This is the last trace we have of the horse Beautiful Bay, for 
that seems to be his honest name, and now I must ask some 
questions. These advertisements cover a period of eleven years 
and they are worthy of careful study. From 1784 to 1791 there 
is no attempt at giving any pedigree at all. With the exception 
of three seasons he seems to have been let, probably on shares, to 
different keepers, in different parts of the country. From first 
to last Selah Norton seems to have been his owner. If he had 
received the pedigree, and the romantic story of his theft, from 
"one Smith," as claimed, is it conceivable that he would have 
concealed that story from the public when it would have added 
so much to the patronage of his horse? How does it come that 
not a single man having this stallion in charge, except Selah 
Norton himself, ever gave his pedigree? What prompted Selah 
Norton to withdraw the horse from public service, in Hartford, 
immediately after he first gave his pedigree? Was it because 
everybody there kncAV it was a fraud? When the horse was taken 
to South Hadley in 1793, why did his keeper there refuse to 
accept either the name True Briton or the new pedigree? It will 
be observed he was advertised there simply as Beautiful Bay and 
no pedigree given. The next two years we find him at Ashfield, 
Massachusetts, to which point it would seem his owner had re- 
moved from Hartford. For some reason that can be better 
imagined than explained, the names Beautiful Bay and True 
Briton are there dropped and he is rechristened as Traveler. To 
this change of name the old pedigree is attached, with a very 
important change in that also, as follows: "Sired by famous old 
Traveler, imported from Ireland, dam Colonel De Lancey's im- 
ported racer." These three words, "imported from Ireland,'" 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 371 

are very important in two particulars, for they not only knock 
out the "featherheads" who have been always maintaining that 
the imported Traveler meant Lloyd's Traveler of New Jersey, 
son of Morton's Traveler, that was imported from Yorkshire into 
Virginia about 1750, but it convicts Selah Norton of inventing 
this pedigree, for there was no such horse brought from Ireland. 
It is certainly unnecessary to say another word in illustration of 
Selah Norton's character. When we study these advertisements 
it becomes as clear as the light of day that nobody believed him 
or the story that "one Smith" stole the horse from Colonel De 
Lancey. The crimes of horse stealing and desertion were ex- 
ceedingly common during the period of the revolution and it is 
quite possible that "one Smith" may have stolen a horse out of 
somebody's stable and sold him to Mr. Ward or Mr. Norton as 
the same horse that Lieutenant Carpenter stole from Colonel De 
Lancey, but neither "one Smith" nor "one Norton" knew any- 
thing more about his pedigree than he did about the man in the 
moon, and I will here end the second chapter of this investiga- 
tion. 

I am clearly of the opinion that Justin Morgan was an honest 
man and that he would not tell a lie, even if he knew it might 
accrue to his present and personal advantage. He was poor, 
feeble in health, and had hard scuffling to get along. As a 
means of livelihood, in part at least, it seems to have been his 
business for a good many years to keep stallions on shares for 
different owners. As late as 1795 he had a horse from Hartford, 
Connecticut, called Figure, to which we will refer later on. In 
1788 he sold his little place in West Springfield, Massachusetts, 
and removed to Randolph, Vermont, where he died in March, 
1798 In the autumn of 1795 he visited West Springfield again, 
for the purpose of collecting some money that was still due him 
there, probably some deferred payments of his former home, and 
as he was not able to get the money he took two horses in lieu 
thereof. One was a three-year-old gelding, and the other was a 
two-year-old bay colt, entire. He led tlie gelding beside the 
horse he was riding and the colt followed all the way. The evi- 
dence that fixes the date of this trip in the autumn of 1795 and 
the age of the colt that followed seems to me to be completely 
bomb-proof. This evidence not only embraces the recollections 
of Justin Morgan's neighbors, but when he died the colt, in 1793, 
was sold by his administrators as a five-year-old. In all the 



S72 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

changes of ownership that took place through his life and at his 
death, in 1821, he was represented as foaled in 1793. He died 
from the effects of a kick that was neglected, and not from old 



The only serious attempt that has heen made to controvert the 
date of 1793 was that made in the name of John Morgan, of 
Lima, New York, in 1842, he being then eighty years old, in the 
Albany Cultivator. Unfortunately the editor fails to publish the 
letter he professes to have received from John Morgan and only 
gives his construction of it, which any child knows is no evidence 
at all. The editor represents him to say "that the two-year-old 
stud which he (Justin) took with him to Vermont was sired by a 
horse owned by Selah Norton, of East Hartford, Connecticut, 
called True Briton or Beautiful Bay." Justin Morgan removed 
to Eandolph, Vermont, in the spring of 1788, and this John 
Morgan removed to Lima, New York, about February, 1790. 
They were not brothers, but distant relatives. If John means to 
say that Justin "took with him" when he removed to Vermont a 
two-year-old son of Beautiful Bay, that colt must have been 
foaled in 178G, which would make him twelve years old instead of 
five when he was sold upon the death of his owner, and thirty-six 
years old instead of twenty-nine when he died from a kick. 
Now, if we concede that Justin did take with him a two-year-old 
son of Beautiful Bay, the dates render it impossible that he 
should have been the founder of the Morgan horse family and we 
have no trace of him whatever. 

Another authority has very recently come to the front, and in 
order to avoid the difficulty of dates and still retain the possibil- 
ity of the horse being by Beautiful Bay, insists that he was foaled 
1789 and bred by Justin Morgan himself. Under this new light 
he was foaled in Vermont and didn't have to travel there at all. 
He insists further that he named the horse Figure and kept him 
in the stud till his death in March, 1798, when the horse was sold 
and his name changed to Justin Morgan. It is true that Justin 
Morgan, still seeking to make a living, kept a stallion two or 
three years ovvned in Hartford, Connecticut, and advertised him 
as "the famous horse Figure, from Hartford." Now, if this 
horse was foaled the j)roperty of Justin Morgan and owned by 
him as long as he lived, why should he advertise him as "from 
Hartford?" All these efforts to fix dates by shifting about so as 
to make it possible for the bogus stolen horse to come in as a sire, 



THE BLACK HAWK OE MOKGAN FAMILY. 373 

have already received more attention than their importance de- 
mands and I will therefore call this the close of the third chapter. 

There are several incidents connected with the life of the colt 
of 1793 that fixed his identity and age upon the recollections of 
tlie neighbors and friends of Justin Morgan. Solomon Steele, 
Evans, Rice and others who knew the colt well, all agree that the 
colt followed his companion and playmate from West Springfield 
to Randolph in the autumn of 1795 and that he was not then 
halter broken. They all agree tliat Evans hired him for fifteen 
dollars a year to draw logs in his clearing, in the place of a yoke of 
oxen. They all agree that Justin Morgan died in March, 1798, 
and that the colt was then sold as a five-year-old. The death was 
an immovable date fixer around Avhich everything in connection 
with these events must be determined. And when the horse 
died in 1821 nobody had ever doubted that he was foaled 1793. 

Justin Morgan, Jr., was in his tenth year when the colt was 
brought home, and he was twelve years old when his father died. 
In 1842 Justin Morgan, Jr., in a communication to the Albany 
Cultivator, says: "One was a three-year-old gelding colt, which 
he led; and the other a two-year-old stud colt, which followed all 
the way from Springfield. The said two-year-old colt was the 
same that has since been known all over New England by the 
name of the Morgan Horse. I know that my father always, while 
he lived, called him a Dutch horse. I have a perfect recollection 
of the horse when my father owned him and afterward, and well 
remember that my father always spoke of him as of the best 
blood." 

When he made these clean-cut and emphatic declarations 
Justin Morgan, Jr., was fifty-six years old, and it has been sug- 
gested that he was too young, at the time, to have remembered 
about the colt. This is a grave mistake, for farmer's boys re- 
member a thousand things better then than they ever do after- 
ward. I don't think that my own memory is remarkable, but to- 
day, at over three score and ten, I can, with the utmost distinct- 
ness, recall the names, color, markings, size, peculiarities and, in 
some cases, the history of most of the horses that were on the 
farm when I was eight years old. I can, therefore, have no hesita- 
tion in accepting Justin Morgan's evidence on account of his 
youthfulness, at the time of which he speaks. 

Did Justin Morgan know what he was saying when he "always, 
while he lived, called his horse a Dutch horse?" And did he 



374 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

understand the historical meaning of his words when "he always 
spoke of him as of the best blood?" To answer these questions 
Ave must make some reference to history. The Butch horses 
were a breed wholly distinct from the horses of the other colonies. 
The colony of New Netherlands (New York) received its supply 
from Utrecht, in Holland, commencing in 1634 and a few years 
following. In forty years they had so increased that the colony 
was well supplied. These horses were about fourteen hands and 
one inch high, which was about one hand higher than the horses 
supplied to the English colonies. They were not only higher, 
but they had more bone and muscle, and, I think, more shapely 
necks. In every respect they were better, except that they were 
not so good for the saddle, for the reason, as I think, that they were 
not pacers. The standard that determined their superiority was 
the higher prices at which they were bought and sold, over the 
New England horses, as shown by the official reports of the 
colony. When the colony passed under British rule, the first 
governor immediately established a race course on Hempstead 
Plains, Long Island, and there in 1GG5 the first organized race in 
tins country took place. This was long before the English race 
horse had reached the character of a breed, and a round hundred 
years before the first representativ^e of that breed reached New 
York. The horses that ran at Hempstead Plains were un- 
doubtedly Dutch horses, for the inhabitants of New York and 
Long Island attended these annual meetings in great numbers, 
and as they were nearly all Dutch they would not have gone a 
stone's throw to see an English horse run. These annual race 
meetings were kept up a great many years by the successive 
governors. 

In 1635 two shiploads of Dutch horses, from the same quarter, 
chiefly mares, reached Salem, Massachusetts, and were sold at 
prices enormously high as compared with the prices of those sent 
from England to the same colony. These two shiploads added 
materially to the average size of the horses of the colony of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, as shown by statistics, as well as the other colo- 
nies getting their foundation stock from that source. We may 
safely conclude, I think, that some of the descendants of these 
shiploads were taken to the valley of the Connecticut when 
Hartford was planted, for we not infrequently meet with the 
term "Dutch horse" in the old prints of that valley. Besides 
this source the valley of the Hudson was full cf them. They 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 375 

retained their distinctive appellation till about the beginning of 
this century. 

Mr. 0. W. Cook, of Springfield, Massachusetts, did a great 
deal of fundamental investigation on the origin of this family, 
away back in 1878-9, etc., and I am under special obligations to 
him for being the first man to open my eyes to the great confi- 
dence game that has been played for a hundred years, and all orig- 
inating in the fabulous story of "one Smith." Among other im- 
portant things he unearths an advertisement of Young Bulrock 
that was advertised to stand at Springfield, 1792, as follows: 
"Young Bulrock is a horse of the Dutch breed, of a large size, 
and a bright bay color, etc." In speaking of his pedigree, Mr. 
Cook most pithily remarks: "In view of the three-fold concur- 
rence of time and place and breed, it fits into the vacuum in the 
Morgan's lineage as a fragment of pottery fits into its comple- 
ment." There was another horse advertised in Springfield that 
year, but he had neither name nor breed and in color he was 
gray. The advertisement of Young Bulrock fits in time, fits in 
color and fits in breed; and thus removes all reasonable doubt 
that he was the sire of the original Morgan horse. This is the 
reason why Justin Morgan "always, while he lived, called him a 
Dutch horse;" and the little scrap of history given above will 
show why he always spoke of him as "of the best blood." He 
was right in the former and he was right in the latter declara- 
tion. It is not possible, at this day, to prove, technically, these 
matters of a hundred years ago, but after considering all the 
facts in the case, we must conclude that they are satisfying to 
the human understanding, and that Justin Morgan told the truth. 

For the past fifty or sixty years the breeding of the original 
Morgan horse has been a subject of apparently unending con- 
troversy. The real facts concerning his origin, however, have 
never been brought to light and fully developed until within the 
last few years, and it is probable that nothing of material value 
will ever be added to the foregoing tracing. We have found 
from contemporaneous history that Lieutenant Wright Carpenter 
stole a horse from Colonel James De Lancey and was successful 
in carrying him into the camp of the patriots at Fishkill, and 
that is all we know about that particular horse. After the war 
was over it is stated that "one Smith" sold a horse to Mr. Ward, 
of Hartford, and represented that he had stolen the horse froin 
Colonel De Lancey, and Mr. Ward sold that horse to Selah Nor- 



376 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ton, who seems to have owned him as long as he lived. It must 
be accepted as true that Lieutenant Carpenter captured a horse 
from Colonel De Lancey, but we cannot accept it as true that 
this was the same horse owned by Norton. We must first know 
how and where "one Smith" got him. Norton had this horse 
and advertised him in different parts of the country for public 
service seven or eight years before the romance of his history 
and pedigree was given to the world. As this romance would 
have been a grand feature in an advertisement of a stallion, Mr. 
Norton was too slow in evolving it, and when he did bring it out 
nobody believed it. At that period many portions of New Eng- 
land abounded in stallions with bogus pedigrees and histories, 
and if we judge Norton by his acts in giving his horse three 
different names at different times and places, we must conclude 
he was ready to conceal or invent anything that would add to 
his horse's popularity and patronage. 

Sherman Morgan. — In his history of the Morgan Horse, Mr. 
Linsley names this and three or four other sons of the original, 
that were kept for stock purposes, but none of them seems to 
have attained any eminence, except Sherman. Ashe never made 
any pretensions to being a trotter, he would have been forgotten 
long ago, had it not been for the lucky circumstances that he 
was the sire of Black Hawk, and thus his name has been pre- 
served. He was scant fourteen hands high, with heavy body on 
short legs, and carried his head well up. He was a chestnut and 
foaled about 1809. There has always been a doubt in the minds 
of many as to whether he was the sire of Black Hawk, but that, 
question will be considered when we reach that horse. His dam 
was a very handsome mare, brought from Naragansett, a pacer, 
and a very desirable saddle mare. In the trotting "Eegister," three 
representations are given as to the breeding of this mare, namely, 
that she was of the Spanish breed; that she was an imported 
English mare; and that she was brought from Virginia on ac- 
count of her beauty and speed. The first claim seemed to have 
the best historical support, and besides this she was brought from 
Providence, Khode Island, and was a very fine pacer. The 
theory was then prevalent that the Narragansett pacers were of 
the "Spanish breed." The elimination of that foolish notion 
from the history of the pacers does not affect the plain statement 
that she was a Narragansett pacer. It is not known that this 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 377 

mare ever produced anything else, either by the original Morgan 
•or by any other horse. 

Black Hawk. — As his name indicates, this horse was a jet 
black, and was something over fifteen hands high. He was 
foaled 1833, was got by Sherman Morgan, and was bred by Ben- 
jamin Kelly, of Durham, New Hampshire. As the question of his 
paternity has been the subject of a great deal of bitter con- 
troversy, continued through many years, and participated in by 
men of intelligence, on both sides, I must give the history, as I 
understand it. Mr. Kelly kept a tavern at Durham and Mr. 
Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, made this house one of 
his points of stopping as he traveled his horse, in his circuit of 
the season. Along with Sherman he had another horse called 
Paddy, black as a raven, that did some service at seven dollars, 
while the price for Sherman was fourteen dollars. On one of 
his visits, Mr. Kelly's black mare, called "Old Narragansett" 
was bred to Sherman and proved to be in foal. Not long after 
this Mr. Kelly sold the mare to Mr. Shade Twombly, living 
about two miles from Durham, and a part of the agreement was 
that if the mare should prove to be with foal, Mr. Twombly was 
to pay for the services of the horse. The next spring the mare 
dropped a fine black horse colt, and Mr. T^vombly claimed the 
colt was by Paddy and not by Sherman, hence, he refused to pay 
fourteen dollars for the services of Sherman, but was willing to 
pay seven dollars for the services of Paddy. This resulted in a 
lawsuit in which it was proved that Sherman was the sire of the 
colt, and Mr. Twombly's estate had to pay the money. The colt 
was kept by Mr. Twombly's heirs, at pasture in Greenland, New 
Hampshire, till he was about two years old, when he was sold at 
auction to Albert Mathes, of Durham, for seventy dollars and 
from him he passed to Benjamin Thurston, of Lowell, for two 
hundred dollars. In Thurston's hands he became quite noted, 
locally, as a trotter, and in 1844 he became the property of David 
Hill, of Bridport, Vermont, where he became altogether the most 
popular stallion in the United States, and died there November, 
1856. He was the first horse to command one hundred dollars 
for his services; and many of the great mares of the country 
were sent to his embrace, among them the world-renowned Lady 
Suffolk, but unfortunately she failed to produce. 

To understand why the fight against the Sherman Morgan 
paternity of this horse should have been so bitter and so per- 



378 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

sistent, we must consider the conditiou of the horse interests in 
New England at that time. When Black Hawk came to the 
front the Morgans of the real Morgan type had already attained 
some degree of popularity and here came a horse overtopping 
them all, with no trace of the Morgan type about him. He and 
his family attracted the attention of purchasers and threw a 
shadow of doubt over the little punchy, hairy -legged fellows that 
knocked out many a sale. Besides this, it was a serious and real 
question in the minds of a great many honest and intelligent 
men, as to whether Sherman Morgan, so typical of his family, 
could possibly have been the sire of a horse so completely outside 
of the family, not only in appearance and formation, but in his 
ability to trot. In 1847 Black Hawk was pitted against the 
Morse Horse, mile heats, best two in three, at the Saratoga State 
Fair, He won the first heat in 2:50| and the second in 2:43^. 
He was then fourteen years old and this was very fast, for a. 
stallion of that period. It is but justice to say that the Morse 
Horse contingent claimed that Black Hawk was set back in the 
first heat for running and that the heat was given to the Morse 
Horse in 2:52^ and that the second and third heats were won by 
Black Hawk in 2:544 and 2:56. Just what the truth is in this 
disagreement I am not able to determine. As we look at this 
horse, so distinct from all his tribe; and as we consider the very 
indistinct knowledge of the laws of generation as held by the 
masses in that day, we cannot wonder that the paternity was so 
vehemently disputed, Neither can we wonder, as his descend- 
ants pass in review before us, that this dispute has never been 
settled to the satisfaction of the contending parties. The old 
Morgan type never reappears in the descendants of this family. 

But, we must not forget that we have considered only half of 
the inheritance of this horse. He had a dam as well as a sire. 
To that half of his pedigree we must now give some attention. 
The story of the "half-bred English mare, brought from New 
Brunswick" has had its day and we may as well lay it aside as a 
humbug. Mr. Allen W. Thomson, of Woodstock, Vermont, has 
brought out the facts with regard to this mare in a form that is 
very clear and satisfactory. In 187C Mr. Thomson visited Albany 
for the purpose of examining everything that had been said in 
The Country Gentleman newspaper touching on the paternity of 
Black Hawk. In this search for the sire he would necessarily 
find many references to the dam and among these references he 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAK FAMILY. 370 

was greatly surprised to find she had been described as ''a pacing 
mare." He goes on to say: "In our visit the same fall to Dur- 
ham, Dover, Portsmouth and Greenland to learn more of her, we 
found a number that knew her when owned in Durham, and they 
said she was then known as the 'Old Narragansett Mare,' They 
said that Benjamin Kelly, deceased, brought the mare into Dur- 
ham, that he had a son John L. living in Manchester, New 
Hampshire, and that he would know more about her, etc." 
After learning that Mr. John L. Kelly was a very intelligent and 
responsible man, having been city marshal and mayor of Man- 
chester, and known as ''Honest John," he wrote him and received 
the following reply: 

" In answer to your inquiries about the dam of Black Hawk, I will give you 
my best recollections, aided somewhat by a dairy which I kept at that time. I 
returned to Durham from a sea voyage in the fall of 1830. In the following- 
spring I went to Boston wif i my father with a lot of horses. We stopped 
over night at Brown's Hotel, at Haverhill, Mass., where we met a teamster 
from Portsmouth, N. H., with a team of four horses. In the hind span was a 
large gray horse and a dark bay mare. Among father's horses was one which 
was a good match for the gray horse. The man noticed it and lold father that 
the mare was too fast for the horse, was worth two of him for speed and bot- 
tom, yet he would trade with father for his gray horse. After a good deal of 
talk, with the aid of Mr. Brown, the trade was made and we drove the mare 
in the carriage to Boston, leading the others. We found her to be a splendid 
roadster, and as she was not in good condiiion to sell, we took her back to Dur- 
ham. At this time she was chafed and bruised up very badly with the heavy 
hames, yet in a few months she came out of it, with no traces of it, excei)t a 
few white spots on her back and breast. The teamster said she was a Narra- 
gansett mare. She would weigh. 1.000 pounds. Father kept her as one of his 
stable horses. She was found to have great speed as a trotter, and father was 
always bragging about her. One day, late in the season, Israel Esty, of Dover, 
drove up to Durham with a trotter, and bantered father for a trot, mile heats 
on Madbury Plains, between Durham and Dover. I had great faith in the 
mare and pleaded with father to accept his offer, and he did, and fifty dollars 
was staked on the race. John Speed was father's hostler, at the time, and he 
commenced getting the mare ready for the race. He had only three weeks ta 
do it in. At the time specified, a large collection of people from Dover and 
Durham collected to witness the race. Dr. Keuben Steele was one of the 
judges. The Esty horse won the first heat, the Kelly mare won the next two, 
distancing the horse in the last one. In the spring of 1832 John Bellows came 
to Durham with the old Sherman Morgan, and I persuaded father to have the 
mare bred to him. He did, as I saw the horse cover her. I was 21 in 1832; 
went to sea again that fall. My recollection of the dam of Black Hawk is she 
was a very fine pointed dark mare, with a nostril so large, when excited, that 
one could put his fist into it. John L. Kelly. 

"Manchester. N. H., August 25, 1876." 



380 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

The only "trip" in this letter is where Mr. Kelly speaks of the 
mare as "a dark bay," but as the identity of the mare is fully 
maintained by other witnesses, this shade of color is not material 
and is, doubtless a slip of the pen. We don't know she was a 
Narragansett mare, but we do know that she was called a Narra- 
gansett. It is wholly possible she may have been a bastard Nar- 
ragansett, or she may have been called a Narragansett merely 
because she was a pacer. At that date there were still many de- 
scendants of the old Narragansetts to be found, of greater or less 
degree of purity in their breeding. Among Mr. Thomson's 
gleanings from persons who knew the mare there are some bear- 
ing upon her color and gait that are in order at this point of our 
inquisition. Mr, John Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, 
says: "She was a good-sized black mare, a fast trotter, with a 
swinging gait, and resembled in appearance the Messenger stock 
of horses." The following description was gathered from several 
persons who knew the mare well and among them Mr. Wingate 
Twombly, son of her former owner. "She was a large, rangy 
mare, a little coarse and brawny, did not carry much flesh, might 
have weighed some over one thousand pounds and was a trifle 
over fifteen and one-half hands high. Head and ears rather 
large, neck long and straight, withers low and thin, medium 
mane and tail, had more hair on the fetlocks than her son, was 
called black a little way off, but close to one could see her grey 
hairs mingled with her coat and close to she was called a steel 
mixed. She had a white strip in her face and some say a little 
white on one hind foot. She was smart to go, but her gait was 
not a smooth, square trot. Some called it a sort of a pace, 
others that she single-footed. She went with her head low when 
trotting fast. One person said it was about a straight line from 
her back to her head when she was going fast. She was called 
the Narragansett Mare when Mr. Kelly owned her. From other 
sources and from men who personally knew the mare and had 
ridden beside her, we have undoubted evidence that she was very 
fast, but all through there is some confusion about the character 
of her gait. Mr. Bellows, who ought to know something about 
the gait of a horse, says: "She was a fast trotter, with a siuing- 
ing gait." Now just what he means by the phrase "swinging 
gait" is hard to determine. Putting all these bits of evidence 
together, the reasonable conclusion seems to be that she was 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MOUGAlSr FAMILY. 381 

double-gaited, and when speeded she would go from the trot to 
the pace or from the pace to the trot as the case might be. 

From this synopsis of all that has been developed in the blood 
lines of Black Hawk, there can be no longer any mystery about 
where he got the characteristics making him so intensely diifer- 
ent from the representatives of the typical Morgan. His sire 
was out of a high-class Narragansett pacer, and his dam was prob- 
bly a fast Narragansett pacer, thus giving him presumably 
seventy-tive per cent, of Narragansett blood and twenty-five per 
cent, of Morgan blood. The fight that was made against him all 
his life, as not being a genuine Morgan, had its foundation in 
justice and truth. He was not a Morgan in either blood or char- 
acter. He founded a very valuable line of trotters, something 
that no other branch of the Morgan family has ever accomplished, 
and of right his descendants should be designated as "the 
Black Hawk Family," and not jumbled up with the heterogeneous 
mass of nondescripts still called "the Morgan Family." Black 
Hawk's gait was spluttery and uneven, rather than square and 
mechanical. A few of his progeny were very perfectly gaited, 
but a great many of them manifested their evil inheritance, 
which, together with unskillful handling, destroyed all possible 
value as trotters. He placed three in the 2:30 list; fourteen of 
his sons were sires of 2:30 performers, six of them with two or 
more, and two daughters produced 2:30 performers. He died 
November, 1856. 

Ethan Allen, 43. — This was a handsome, bright bay horse, 
less than fifteen hands high, with three white feet and a star. 
He was foaled 1849, got by Black Hawk, 5; dam, a fast trotting 
grey mare of unknown pedigree. With a list of all the cele- 
brated American horses before him, it would be very difficult, if 
not impossible, for the best-informed horseman to select an animal 
that has been so great a favorite with the American people, and 
for so long a time, as the famous Ethan Allen. When four years 
old he gave the world a sensation by eclipsing everything that 
had appeared before him at that age; and again when he was 
eighteen years old he renewed and intensified the sensation by 
trotting in 2:15 with a running mate. These sensations of his 
youth and his old age, did much to give him a standing with the 
people; but his wonderful beauty and remarkable docility and 
kindness, with the elegance and ease of his action, made him the 
favorite of everybody. His trotting gait was recognized by the- 



382 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

best judges and experts as probably more perfect than that of 
ajiy horse of his day. Others have gone faster singly, but no 
one has done it in greater perfection of motion. In his great 
flights of speed he was not bounding in the air, but down close 
to the ground, with a gliding motion that steals from quarter 
pole to quarter-pole with inconceivable rapidity. He was bred 
by Joel W. Holcomb, of Ticonderoga, New York, and as the re- 
sult of a practical joke he played, for the purpose of annoying his 
uncle, David Hill, the owner of Black Hawk, against whom he 
had some pique just at that time, many well-meaning and no 
doubt honest people once believed, and possibly still believe, that 
Ethan Allen was by Flying Morgan and not by Black Hawk. 
The fact that Ethan Allen was the same color as Flying Morgan 
and that there was some resemblance in size and style of action 
of the two horses, lent a strong suggestion to the joke as a truth. 
I am indebted to Mr. I. V. Baker, Jr., of Comstock's Landing, 
S. B. Woodward, then of Ticonderoga, and B. H. Baldwin, of 
AVhitehall, New York, for the details of the way the Flying Mor- 
gan story started, and need only say the narrator was an eye-wit- 
ness to the whole affair. In the spring of 1852, in the barroom 
of 8. B. Woodward's hotel, at Ticonderoga, quite a number of 
the villagers being present, Mr. Joel W. Holcomb came in and 
said he was going to Avrite a letter to R. M. Adams, of Burling- 
ton, Vermont, the owner of Flying Morgan, and he was going to 
have some fun with him; and, going to the desk in the room, he 
wrote, substantially as follows: "I don't know but I have made 
all the reputation for David Hill and old Black Hawk that I 
care to. I am willing to have the credit go where it belongs, 
and desire to let yourself and the public know that my colt Ethan 
Allen is got by your horse Flying Morgan." 

"There," he said, "you will see this in all the Vermont paper.; 
next week. Won't Uncle David be mad?" 

"What!" exclaimed some of his neighbors, after hearing it 
read, "you won't put your name to such a falsehood as that? 
It's a shame." 

"Well, well," said Holcomb, "I'll add a postscript." And 
going to the desk he wrote below his signature, leaving a good 
wide space between his signature and the following words: 

"Flying Morgan never covered the dam of Ethan Allen, never 
smelt of her and never saw her, consequently Ethan Allen was 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 383 

not by Flying Morgan, but he can beat Flying Morgan or any 
other stallion in the State of V'ermoiit." 

The next fall Mr. Adams visited many of the fairs with his 
horse and showed Ilolcomb's letter, and, it is said, with the post- 
script torn off. Every man in Ticonderoga knew as well as Mr. 
Holeomb how Ethan Allen was bred, and this letter created 
much indignation. But Holeomb was a reckless man and cared 
for nothing more than what he called a good joke, and the 
more it hurt any one's feelings the better it suited him. 

This account of the "joke" was written down by Mr. Baker, 
at the dictation of Mr. AVoodward, April 22, 1875, and I have 
implicit confidence in its substantial accuracy. It has been said 
that the reason Holeomb did this was out of ill feeling toward 
Mr. David Hill, the owner of Black Hawk, and Holcomb's uncle, 
Ijecause he dunned him for payment of the horse's services in 
getting Ethan Allen. One day at the Fashion Course, in the 
spring of 18G7, as I was looking at Ethan while he was taking 
his daily exercise, either Mr. Holeomb or Mr. Roe, his partner — 
I knew them both by sight as the owners of Ethan Allen, but not 
well enough to distinguish one from the other, but I think it was 
Mr. Holeomb — came up to me and expressed a good deal of 
solicitude to know how I was registering the horse. He ap- 
peared gratified when I assured him I had no doubt he was a son 
of old Black Hawk and would so enter him. He remarked "that 
was right," and said the Flying Morgan story originated in a 
practical joke and should not be permitted to go into history as a 
fact. This is the full history of the basis of the controversy, 
and certainly, to a reasonable man, it does not leave a single peg 
on which to hang a hope for the Flying Morgan story. 

But, the paternity of Ethan x\llen is not left to the uncertain- 
ties of recollection nor to be trifled with by practical jokers. 
The books of Black Hawk's services show that the dam of Ethan 
Allen was bred to him on a certain day or days of the season of 
1848, and was taken away believed to be in foal. This fact is con- 
ceded on all hands as wholly indisputable, but it is claimed that 
Flying Morgan was kept in Ilolcomb's stable one night, after the 
mare returned from Bridport, and the two were there surrepti- 
tiously coupled. I have studied this claim in all its details, I 
have examined every detail minutely, and I do not hesitate to 
say there is not a single shadow of evidence to support the claim. 
In Vermont, as in Kentucky, there are many people who can re- 



384: THE HOKSE OF AMEKICA. 

member things that never occurred, but in the former State these- 
people are at a great disadvantage, for they are not able to get so 
many to agree with and support their remarkable memories. 
The Vermonters are very far from being all honest, but they are 
very much disposed to make up their own minds, whether riglit 
or wrong. 

In searching for the breeding of the little flea-bitten grey 
mare, "called a Messenger," that produced Ethan Allen, I have 
not been sparing of either time or labor. I have assiduously 
followed every clew that presented itself, and waded through 
"sloppy" correspondence "knee deep," but I never have been 
able to reach a single point that was relevant and tangible. 
From the first that is known of her at Hague, New York, her 
identity has been maintained by a spavin on one leg and one hip 
knocked down, and thus she has been traced through the hands, 
of many owners till she reaches Mr. Holcomb, of Ticonderoga, 
New York. A pretence has been set up that she was by some 
Morgan horse, but this was only a wish of the originator, and not 
a fact founded on reasonable evidence. It is said she was quite 
a fast trotter, in her younger days, and that she could beat all 
the farmers' horses against which she was started. That she 
had a trotting inheritance, and probably from Messenger, there: 
can be no reasonable doubt. 

Ethan Allen made his first appearance as a trotter at the Clin- 
ton County Fair, as a three-year-old, and made a record, over a 
very bad track, of 3:20 — 3:21. In May following, then four years 
old, at the Union Course, he beat Kose of Washington in 2:36 — 
2:39 — 2:42. This was then the fastest time ever made by a four- 
year-old. He then retired to the stud and did not again appear 
till October, 1855, when, over the Cambridge Park Course, he 
beat Columbus, Sherman Black Hawk, and Stockbridge Chief for 
the stallion purse in 2:34^ — 2:37. Three of the contestants here 
were sons of Black Hawk. The next season he defeated Hiram 
Drew twice, to wagon, making a record of 2:32|. October 15, 
1858, at Boston, he beat Columbus Jr., and Hiram Drew, 2:37 — 
2:35 — 2:33. The same month, on the Union Course, he beat 
George M. Patchen, to wagons, distancing him the first heat in 
2:28. At the Union Course, Long Island, July 12, 1860, he beat 
Princess, distancing her the second heat in 2:294^ — 2:25^. This, 
is his fastest record. He was frequently beaten by George M. 
Patchen, Flora Temple, etc., and it was thought by many that, 



THE BLACK HAWK OK MORGAN FAMILY. 385 

he could not take up the weight and "hold the clip" for the full 
mile out. His most famous performance was made in 1867, and 
as I had the pleasure of witnessing it, from a very eligible posi- 
tion, I will here repeat the description as then made: 

"On the 21st of June, 1867, on the Fashion Course, it was 
my good fortune to witness the crowning event of his life. 
Some three weeks before, with running mate, he had beaten 
Brown George and running mate, in very fast time, scoring one 
heat in 2:19. This made horsemen open their eyes, and there at 
once arose a difEerence of opinion, about the advantage to the 
trotter of having a runner hitched with him, to pull the weight. 
This resulted in a match for two thousand five hundred dollars 
to trot Ethan x\llen and running mate against Dexter, who was 
then considered invincible. As the day approached the betting 
was about even; but the evening before the race, word came 
from the course that Ethan's running mate had fallen lame and 
could not go, but they would try to get Brown George's running 
mate, then in Connecticut, to take the place of the lame runner. 
As the horses were strangers to each other, it was justly con- 
cluded that the change gave Dexter a great advantage and the 
betting at once changed from even to two to one on Dexter. 
Long before noon the crowd began to assemble; the sporting men 
everywhere were shaking rolls of greenbacks over their heads, 
shouting "two to one on Dexter." I met a friend from Chicago, 
who sometimes speculated a little, and when he told me he was 
betting two to one on Dexter, I took the liberty of advising him 
to be cautious, for I thought the team would win the race, and 
that its backers knew what they were doing. Before the hour 
arrived I secured a seat on the ladies' stand, from which every 
foot of the course, and the countless multitudes of people, could 
be taken in at a glance. The vehicles in numbers were simply 
incalculable, and the multitudes were estimated at forty thousand 
people. Upon the arrival of the hour, the judges ascended the 
stand and rang up the horses, when the backers of the team 
came forward, explained the mishap that had befallen the run- 
ner, that they had Brown George's mate on the ground, but, as 
he and Ethan had never been hitched together, they were un- 
willing to risk so large a sum, and closed the race by paying one 
thousand two hundred and fifty forfeit. When this announce- 
ment was made there was a general murmur that spread, step by 
step, through all that vast multitude. The betting fraternity 



386 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

were just where they started and every spectator realized a feel- 
ing of disgust at the whole management. As soon as this had 
time to exert its intended effect upon the crowd, the backers of 
the team came forward again and expressed their unwillingness 
to have the people go away dissatisfied, and proposed a little 
match of two hundred and fifty a side, which was promptly 
accepted by the Dexter party; and when it was known there 
would be a race after all the shout of the multitudes was like the 
voice of many waters. 

"This being a new race, the betting men had to commence de 
novo. The surroundings of the pool stands were packed with an 
eager and excited crowd, anxious to get on their money at two, 
and rather than miss, at three to one on Dexter. The work of 
the auctioneers was short, sharp and decisive, and the tickets 
were away up in the hundreds and oftentimes thousands. But 
the pool-stands did not seem to accommodate more than a small 
fraction of those anxious to invest, and in all directions in the 
surging crowd, hands were in the air, filled with rolls of green- 
backs, and shouting "two to one on Dexter." I was curious to 
note what became of these noisy offers, and I soon observed that 
a quiet-looking man came along, took all the party had to invest 
and then went quietly to another of the shouters, and then anothei' 
and so on, till I think that every one who had money to invest, 
at that rate, was accommodated. The amount of money bet was 
enormous, no doubt aggregating a quarter of a million, in a few 
minutes. 

"When the horses appeared on the track to warm up for the 
race. Dexter, driven by the accomplished reinsman Budd Doble, 
was greeted with a shout of applause. Soon the team appeared, 
and behind it sat the great master of trotting tactics, Dan Mace. 
His face, which has so often been a puzzle to thousands, had no 
mask over it on this occasion. It spoke only that intense ear- 
nestness that indicates the near approach of a supreme moment. 
The team was hitched to a light skeleton wagon; Ethan wore 
breeching, and beside him was a great strong race horse, fit to 
run for a man's life. His traces were long enough to allow him 
to fully extend himself, but they were so much shorter than 
Ethan's that he had to take the weight. Dexter drew the inside, 
and on the first trial they got the send off without either one having 
six inches the advantage. When they got the word, the flight of 
speed was absolutely terrific, so far beyond anything I had ever 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN" FAMILY. 387 

witnessed in a trotting horse, that I felt the hair rising on my 
head. The running horse was next to me, and notwithstanding 
my elevation, Ethan was stretched out so near the ground that 
I could see nothing of him but his ears. I fully believed that, 
for several rods at this point, they were going at a two-minute 
gait. 

'"It was impossible that this terrible pace could be maintained 
long, and just before reaching the first turn Dexter's head began 
to swim and the team passed him and took the track, reaching 
the first quarter-pole in thirty-two seconds, with Dexter three or 
four lengths behind. The same lightning speed was kept np 
tlirough the second quarter, reaching the half-mile 2:>olo in 1:04, 
with Dexter still farther in the rear. Mace then took a pull on 
bis team, and came home a winner by six or eight lengths, in 
"2:15. When this time was put on the blackboard, the response 
of the multitude was like the roar of the ocean. Although 
some distance away, through the second quarter of this heat I 
had a fair, unobstructed side view of the stallion and of his action, 
when going at the lightning rate of 2:08 to the mile. I could 
not observe that he received the slightest degree of propulsion 
from the running horse; and my conviction was then, and is now, 
that any such propulsion would have interfered with his own un- 
approachable action, and Avould have retarded rather than helped 
him. The most noticeable feature in his style of movement was 
the remarkable lowness to which he dropped his body and the 
straight, gliding line it maintained at that elevation. 

"The team now had the inside, and in the first attempt they 
were started for the second heat, but they did not appear to me 
to be going so fast as in the first heat. Before they had gone 
many rods Ethan lost his stride and Dexter took the track at the 
very spot where he had lost it in the first heat. The team soon 
got to work, and near the beginning of the second quarter col- 
lared Dexter, but the stallion broke soon after and fell back, not 
yards, nor lengths, but rods before he caught. Incredible as it 
may seem, when he again got his feet, he put on such a burst of 
speed as to overhaul Dexter in the third quarter, when he broke 
again and Mace had to pull him nearly to a standstill before he 
recovered. Dexter was now a full distance ahead and the heat 
appeared to be his beyond all peradventure. I was watching the 
team in its troubles very closely and my idea of the distance lost 
was the result of a deliberate and careful estimate at the moment; 



St'S THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

and the query in my mind then was whether the team could save- 
its distance. At last the old horse struck his gait, and it was 
like a dart out of a catapult, or a ball from a rifle. The team 
not only saved its distance, but beat Dexter home five or six 
lengths in 2:16. 

''In the third heat Mace had it all his own way throughout, 
coming home the winner of the race in 2:19. The backers of 
Dexter, up to the very last, placed great reliance on his well- 
known staying qualities; but the last heat showed that the terri- 
ble struggle told upon him more distressingly than upon the 
team. It is said by those who timed Dexter privately that he 
trotted the three heats in 2:17, 2:18, and 2:21. As an opinion, 
I will say that if ever there was an honest race trotted this was- 
one, but there was such an exhibition of sharp diplomacy, of the 
"diamond cut diamond" order, as is seldom witnessed, even 
among the sharp practices of the turf. It is not probable that 
Ethan's running mate fell amiss at all, the evening before, as 
represented; and if she did, it was not possible to send to Con- 
necticut for another horse and have him there early in the morn- 
ing as was pretended. This was a mere ruse put out to get the 
advantage of the long odds. The managers of the team knew 
just how the horses would work and knew they had speed enough 
to beat any horse on earth. When the race was called and they 
came forward and paid forfeit, it was merely to give the 'two to 
one on Dexter' money encouragement to come out. It did 
come out most vociferously and was all quietly taken. It was 
said John Morrissey was the manager in chief, and that his share 
of the winnings amounted to about forty thousand dollars." 

I have here given my personal impressions of this race, not be- 
cause the performance was of any special value, as a test of 
speed, but because the time was then phenomenal, even with this 
kind of hitch, and as an illustration of what certain horses can 
do when relieved of all weight. This was among the first of the 
contests of this kind, and although some effort was made to in- 
troduce this plan by which a poor horse could beat a good one, it 
never has received much encouragement. With all his perfec- 
tion of gait and wide popularity, extending from early life to old 
age, Ethan Allen was not a success as a progenitor of speed. He 
placed but six in the 2:30 list, and the best — Billy Barr — with a 
record of 2:23f. He left but one son equal to himself as a sire,, 
and several daughters that became the producers of single per- 



THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAX FAMILY. 389 

formers. He was kept several seasons in Kansas and died there 
September, 1870. 

Daniel Lambert, 102, was a chestnut horse, foaled 1858; got 
by Etlian Allen, 43; dam Fanny Cook, by Abdallah; grandam by 
Stockholm's American Star, etc. His color was a light chestnut, 
and his mane and tail were of the yellow, flaxen shade. He was 
about fifteen hands high and long and light in the body, with no 
indications of Morgan blood about him unless it was in the 
kinkiness of his mane and tail. But why should he not resemble 
almost anything else than the little nondescript Morgan, when 
he had only one-sixteenth of his blood in his veins? He had 
more Messenger than Morgan blood, and according to the rules of 
arithmetic it is a misnomer to call him a Morgan. More than 
this, his dam was a daughter of the great Abdallah, far and away 
the greatest trotting sire of his generation. When we consider 
that he had four times as much of the blood of Abdallah as he 
had of the original Morgan, we can see the absurdity of sticking 
to the right male line after that line has been wiped out by other 
lines far more potential. Lambert was bred by Mr. John Porter 
of Ticonderoga, New York, and as a colt he showed great promise 
on the ice, and was thought to be the fastest and best of the get 
of Ethan Allen. He was known far and wide as the "Porter 
Colt," and he was the popular heir to very great expectations. 
To have created so much enthusiasm he must have shown great 
speed for a youngster, and he is credited with a record of 2:42 as 
a three-year-old. As a sire of trotters he stood very high at one 
time and was even with Blue Bull in his number of representa- 
tives in the 2:30 list, but in the end the little '^plebeian" pacer 
outstripped him a long way. Lambert put thirty-seven trotters 
into the 2:30 list, but when we come to study this list we are not 
very favorably impressed, for about one-third of the animals have 
but a single heat inside of the mark, with only five or six reputa- 
ble campaigners and a single one — Comee — that ranked among the 
real good ones. Comee had seventy-one heats to his credit and a 
record of 2:21^. Thirty-three of Daniel Lambert's sons have put 
one hundred and thirty-six in the list, and forty-four of his 
daughters have produced seventy-four performers. 



CHAPTER XXVIIL 

THE ORLOFF TKOTTER, BELLFOUXDER, AND THE ENGLISH HACKNEY.. 

Orloffs the only foreign trotters of merit — Count Alexis Orloff, founder of the 
breed — Origin of the Orloff — Count Orloff began breeding in 1770 — Suie- 
tanka, Polkan, and Poliian'sson, Barss, really the first Orloff trotting sire — 
The Russian i)acers — Theirgreat speed — Imported Bellfounder — His history 
and characteristics — Got little speed — His descendants — The English 
Hackney — Not a breed, but a mere type — The old Norfolk trotters — Hack- 
ney experiments in America — Superiority of the trotting-bred horse 
demonstrated in show-ring contests. 

It may be a little outside of the field of our discussion to in- 
clude the Orlolf Trotter, but as a few of them have been brought, 
to this country, and as that is the only organized and recognized 
breed of trotters in all the world beside our own, it seems to be 
necessary to give a brief synopsis of the origin and history of 
that breed, so far as we may be able. An additional and proba- 
bly a more cogent reason for making this foreign detour is the 
fact that tbere are now many American trotters on the turf in 
Europe, and practically their only competitors, whether on the 
turf or in the breeding studs, are the Orloffs of Russia. 

"Wallace's American Trotting Register," the first volume of 
which was issued in 1871, was an individual enterprise. Two- 
years afterward the director-in-chief of the Russian Imperial 
Studs submitted a series of questions to different scientific gentle- 
men, whose studies were in the right direction, soliciting their views- 
on the practicability and advisability of establishing a govern- 
mental standard by which the Orloif trotters should be classed and 
officially registered. The report was favorable and the Russian 
trotting register was established under governmental direction. 
This was the second movement toward establishing a hreed; not 
merely by writing a lot of names in a book, but by writing those 
names on the turf of two continents. A delegation from France 
once visited me to consult about establishing a Register in that- 
country, and to learn how to commence such an enterprise. 
When I asked them what strains of blood they had that couldl 



THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 391 

trot, they did not seem to know of any particular strains, or any 
one strain better than another, to serve as a foundation, but they 
were sure they had plenty of trotters. This was the first I ever 
had heard of French-bred trotters, and it was the last I ever 
heard of the French trotting register. 

The stalwart Alexis Orloif took a very active part in making 
Catherine 11. Empress of Russia — for which he was loaded with 
honors as well as lucrative offices. In the war with the Turks in 
1772 he was given command of the Russian fleet, and with the 
assistance of the English fleet under Admiral Elphinstone, he 
achieved a great victory and captured the pasha in command of 
the Turkish fleet. Owing to some unusual kindness Count Orloff 
Avas able to extend to the captured Turkish commander, or his 
family, he presented the count with a pure white stallion, said 
to be a Barb, which he took home with him and placed in his 
stud of horses, that he had established but a short time before. 
Another story is that the count bought this white horse, which 
he called Smetanka, while he was in Greece and paid a large 
j)rice for him. I am not able to say which representation is the 
more probable, and it is not material to our history, as there is 
no dispute about the identity of Smetanka as the nominal head 
of the Orloff breed of horses, and neither story gives any infor- 
mation about his blood. No doubt he was a Turk. Count Alexis 
commenced his breeding stud in 1770, and there appears to have 
been a good deal of system about it or else a large amount of 
very free guessing. When first established, the horse breeders 
say, it consisted of stallions and mares as follows: Arabs, 12 stal- 
lions, 10 mares; Turkish, 1 stallion, 2 mares; English, 20 stal- 
lions, 32 mares; Dutch, 1 stallion, 8 mares; Persian, 3 stallions, 
2 mares; Danish, 1 stallion, 3 mares; Mecklenburg, 1 stallion, 
5 mares. From this it will be seen that he had more English run- 
ning blood than all the other varieties put together, and yet no 
trotters came from that source. From this great variety of com- 
posite material the count had free rein in his grand experiment 
cf producing the type of horse that best pleased his fancy. As a 
matter of course the indiscriminate commingling of these differ- 
ent strains and types would produce a mongrel lot, from which a 
few superior animals might be selected, and doubtless were 
selected, for breeding purposes. 

The different writers who have discussed the result of this 
experiment seem to agree, substantially, that t^vo distinct types 



392 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Avere the result — the galloper for the saddle and the trotter for 
harness — but they assume what appears to me to be a very un- 
reasonable conclusion that both these types were indebted to the 
super-excellence of Smetanka, The count was one of the most 
prominent sporting men of his day, an inveterate horse-racer and 
cock-fighter, and under this kind of management it is hardly 
credible that the twenty English thorouglibred stallions should 
have been put aside for the little white horse of positively un- 
known origin. But whatever may have been the predominating 
blood in the saddle department, it is certain that the trotter is 
lineally descended from Smetanka. He was bred on a Danish 
mare and produced Polkan (Volcan), without anything new or 
striking in his characteristics. Polkan was bred on a Dutch mare 
and produced Barss, and this was the first to manifest a disj)Osi- 
tion to extend himself to his utmost at the trot and to stick to it. 
Barss became a great favorite with his master; for, although stum- 
bled upon, he was a new creation and is the real progenitor of all 
the horses that bear the name Orloff. His component elements 
are easily expressed. He had twenty-five per cent, of the blood 
of Smetanka; twenty-five per cent, of the blood of the Danish 
mare, and fifty per cent, of the blood of the Dutch mare. It 
seems to be reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the trotting 
instinct must be found in the unknown elements of the Dutch 
mare. 

Some years ago Prof. (the name I cannot now recall), 

from the Imperial Agricultural College, near Moscow, Russia, 
paid me several visits for the purj)ose of gathering up what infor- 
mation he could obtain about the origin and history of the Amer- 
ican Trotter. He was very intelligent and thorough in his 
methods of obtaining information, and each succeeding day he 
came back to me with a new series of questions hinging upon 
previous interviews, and all carefully prepared. These questions 
Avere so admirably shaped to reach the vital points of the subject 
that I became greatly interested in the man. When it came my 
turn to ask questions, my first one was. What was the origin and 
lineage of the Dutch mare that produced Barss? He replied, "Ah, 
the scientific men of Russia would give a great deal to be able to 
answer that question." We both agreed, perfectly, that the liv- 
ing instinct of the trotter came from that mare, but he was not 
able to tell me anything of her history or habits of action. He 
told me there were many pacers in Russia and that the best ones 



THE OKLOFF TROTTEK. 393 

came from the province of Viatka and from the region of the 
V^olga River. 

As the true source from which the Russian trotters have 
drawn their ability to trot fast has not been developed nor deter- 
mined by history, we must consider the problem in the light o'' 
the surrounding conditions, and possibly our American experi- 
ences may lead to its solution. In 1873 Prof. Von Mittendorf, 
at the request of the director-in-chief of the imj^erial stud, pre- 
pared a very able paper on the scientific questions involved in 
the establishment of a Government Register for the Orloff trot- 
ters. In this paper he discusses the pace and the trot as both 
original and natural gaits and insists that there are no outward 
indications in form or shape by which the animal, when at rest, 
can be decided to be a pacer or a trotter. In his own words he 
says: 

" In answer to the question whether, from the form of a horse at rest, it 
can be ascertained what gait would be easiest assumed by it, viz., trotting or 
pacing, I must confess that I have never seen, read or heard of such marks, 
and, indeed, there never are any symptoms or signs of inclination for pacing 
in the proportions of any horse with the single negative exception, viz., that 
great speed in one-sided motion does not agree with a large frame, which is 
more adapted to leaping, and hence fast pacers are never found among large 
horses." 

This is the view as taken by a Russian scientist of the distinc- 
tion, or rather lack of distinction, between the trotter and the 
pacer. I have not quoted this paragraph from Prof. Mittendorf 
because it contained anything new in the economy of breeding, 
but to prove that there were pacers in Russia and that their re- 
lation to the trotter was considered in the formation of the rules 
of admission to the Orloflf trotting register. A very intelligent 
Avriter, evidently a Russian and one who knew what he was talk- 
ing about, contributed an interesting article to the New York 
Sun of July 9, 1877, from which we get a clear and strong light 
on the practical side of the Russian pacer, and I will here again 
quote: 

" Up to the middle of the last century horses in Kussia were not scientifi- 
cally bred ; they ran wild in n)any parts of the country. Those caught on 
the steppes of the river Don, and in the wilderness of the district of Viatka. 
obtained early celebrity, which they still maintain. The Don horses are those 
famous Cossack steeds about which so much has been written of late. The 
Viatka horses, or Bitugues, as they are called, are the genuine trotters of 
Russia. They are all pacers, equally remarkable for their speed and their en- 



394 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

durance. But since tbe Orloff breed has been introduced, tlie Bitugues liave 
been excluded from all matches, on the ground that their pacing is not 
orthodox. 

" It is with these Bitugues that the peculiar troika team, of which a speci- 
men was shown in Fleetwood Park, on Saturday, originated. A fast, sturdy 
Bitugue is put in shafts, and a light running horse from the steppes harnessed 
on each side of him. A good Bitugue trots so fast that the wild steppe run- 
ners have to be whipped all the time to force them to keep up with him. The 
idea of putting an Orloff trotter in the place of a Bitugue is very queer, as no 
square trotter can equal the speed of those famous pacers of Viatka, and keep 
abreast with side runners." 

From these three several sources we learn a number of facts 
that may have a more or less important bearing upon the true 
origin of the Orloff trotter. (1) That there are now, and have 
been for generations past, plenty of pacers in Eussia. (2) That 
these pacers have a common habitat, north and east of the Doii. 

(3) That they are a very old race, running back in the centuries 
away beyond the knowledge of man or the records of history. 

(4) That they are a very fast and very enduring race, and that 
they have been trained for generations as the shaft horses of the 
troika and their speed so well developed as to require good run- 
ning horses to keep abreast with. them. (5) That they are of 
smaller size than the average and lack symmetry, and thus, not- 
withstanding their great speed and bottom, they and their blood 
are excluded from registration with the Orloff s. (G) That they 
are also excluded from competing for any prizes that may be 
offered, and no other reason is suggested than that they would be 
sure to win. 

Russia and America both have pacers and they are both carry- 
ing forward the breeding and development of the trotter with 
great intelligence and success. No other nation has been able 
to make even a beginning in this field of animal economy except 
by the introduction of the foundation stock from one or other of 
these two countries. It may be taken as historically true, and 
as applying to every nation on the face of the earth, that where 
there are no pacers there are no trotters. Hundreds of unmis- 
takable experiences in this country go to show that the pacer is 
a great source of trotting speed. At one time a pacing stallion 
of obscure pacing origin stood at the head of the list of all stal- 
lions as the sire of the greatest number of trotters with fast 
records. A great multitude of our fastest trotters at maturity 
were foaled pacers from trotting parents. It is no longer a mat- 



THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 395 

ter of wonder or surprise that with two animals from the same 
parents one of them should be a fast trotter and the ©ther 
a fast pacer. Neither is it any longer remarkable that a fast 
trotter with a very fast record should turn around and make just 
as fast a record at the pace. The American people are just be- 
ginning to realize, in its full force, the declaration of more than 
twenty years ago, that the trot and the pace are simply two forms 
of the same gait, in the economy of motion. The only differ- 
ence that has been observed as between two brothers, the one a 
pacer and the other a trotter, is that with the same skill in han- 
dling the pacer will come to his speed much quicker than the 
trotter, which is of itself a strong suggestion at least that the 
pace is the more natural and easier form of the one gait. 

Now, in view of the fact that Smetanka was of Saracenic origin 
— a strain of blood that has always been antagonistic to the pacer, 
and never produced a pacer or a trotter; and in view of the fact 
that his grandson, Barss, is accepted as the first of all Orloff 
trotters; and in view of the further fact that in thousands of 
American experiences the trotter has come from the pacer, it 
seems to be a reasonable conclusion that the "Dutch Mare" that 
produced Barss had a strong pacing inheritance, and possibly 
had her speed fully developed, as the Bitugue in the count's own 
team. 

Among all the pleasures which Count Orloff derived from his 
experiments in breeding, whether of gamecocks, or race horses, 
or saddlers, or trotters, Barss was his greatest favorite because he 
was his highest achievement in the art of breeding. This judg- 
ment of his master has been confirmed in the ex2ieriences and 
liistory of all succeeding generations for a hundred years, and the 
name of Barss will be known through the coming centuries as 
the founder of a mighty breed of trotters. I once possessed a 
fine picture of Barss hitched to a sleigh and driven by his 
breeder. Count Orloff, himself; and I have seen it stated some- 
where that this picture was a copy of a bronze statue erected to 
the memory of the Count Orloff and the greatest horse of Russia. 

It has been stated by some writers, but with what measure of 
authority I do not know, that for about thirty years after the 
appearance of Barss. his daughters were bred to English thor- 
oughbreds, to Arabs, to Anglo- Arabs, and, indeed, to all the 
hipjhly bred crosses that the great establishment was able to 
iurnish, and there was no imijrovement in either the quality or 



396 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

the speed of the produce. From this it is evident that the 
count ai'.d his managers were at that period entangled in the 
same foolish notions that befogged the minds of so many very 
worthy gentlemen in this country some years ago, viz., that the 
way to improve the trotter was to go to the runner — the horse 
that never could trot. This foolish notion, that never had a 
spark of reason in it, naturally and necessarily weakened the 
trotting instinct of the descendants of Barss, and would have 
wiped it all out if it had been followed persistently, and there 
would have been no OrlofE trotters to-day. 

After this narrow escape from the annihilation of much of the 
good that Barss had done, the management then began to look 
for the same blood and the same habit of action tliat the "Dutch 
Mare" transmitted to her son, and, with this element to the 
front, progression was resumed. Out of his great variety of 
forms and of strains of blood the count and his managers could 
pick and choose for the size, shape and forms they wanted, but 
they were not able to transfer with the size, shape and form the 
instincts and psychical nature of the horse. The count seems 
to have carried forward his great enterprise rather with a view 
to experimentation than its commercial possibilities. Smetanka 
lived but a year or two, and when he stumbled upon the produc- 
tion of Barss, a magnificent individual and a great trotter, his 
head seems to have been turned, as he evidently supposed that- 
he could breed any kind of horse he wished to breed, and be able 
to do anything he wished him to do. At his death, in 1808, he- 
left no male heir to succeed him, but he provided in his will that 
his stud should not be dispersed. It was kept intact till about 
1845, when it was purchased by the government, and finally 
divided among a number of prominent breeders in dijfferent por- 
tions of the empire. 

Without having any knowledge on the subject that is definite 
and specific, I am led to infer that the rules on registration and 
racing in Russia are a hindrance to the breeding and develop- 
ment of the trotter. As I understand it, no horse can be regis- 
tered unless he is purely descended from Barss. And I under- 
stand further, that he must possess the same requirements in 
order to enter and start in a public race against the Orloffs. If 
it be true that these restrictions are really in existence and are 
enforced, we can understand why the American trotter is so far 
ahead of the Orloff in speed and in the markets of Europe. The 



THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 397 

•Orloff is restricted to certain lines of blood and is protected 
against competition from others that might beat hiii. The 
American is free from all restrictions of blood and gathers up 
all that is best and fastest. He neither asks nor accepts protec- 
tion from any quarter, but throws down the glove to all comers. 

Bellfounder was imported from England, July, 1822, by 
James Boott, of Boston, Mass. He was placed in the hands of 
Samuel Jaques, Jr. — a very shrewd manager who understood the 
use of printer's ink and did not hesitate about employing it liber- 
ally. In his advertisement for 1823 he says: "This celebrated 
horse is a bright bay with black legs, standing fifteen hands 
high." From this we are safe in concluding he was not more 
than fifteen hands, and from another contemporaneous source 
it is learned that he was a little below that measurement. On 
this point the recollections, or perhaps impressions, of Orange 
County horsemen are not very trustworthy, as one of them places 
his height at sixteen hands and others at fifteen and a half. 
His pedigree was given on the card which was distributed by his 
groom in the form following: "Got by old Bellfounder, out 
of Velocity by Haphazard, by Sir Peter out of Miss Hervey 
by Eclipse." "Velocity trotted on the Norwich road in 1806, 
sixteen miles in one hour, and although she broke five times into 
a gallop, and as often turned round, she won her match." Al- 
though after diligent search I have not been able to find this 
performance of Velocity, it may be true that a mare so named 
may have trotted as represented, but she was not a daughter of 
Haphazard. The dates make this utterly impossible, and Mr. 
Jaques was smart enough never to put this humbug pedigree in 
his elaborate advertisements that appeared in the leading agricul- 
tural papers of the country, year after year. 

As the great mass of people of that day knew nothing and 
oared but little about pedigrees, the astute manager of the horse 
struck an expedient in the way of advertising that was very 
t^tfective. He had a cut made of a horse trotting loose on the 
road, at the rate of a hurricane, and in the background was an 
entablature with the legend "Seventeen and a half miles an 
hour," which anybody and everybody would interpret to mean 
that this was a record made by imported Bellfounder, and there 
he was doing it. This cut in reduced form went the rounds of 
the agricultural press, and in 1831 made its appearance in the 



398 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

"Family Encyclopedia of Useful Knowledge." This dodge was- 
exceedingly effective, and as it appeared in a book it must be true. 
Thousands of people interpreted the picture to mean that im- 
ported Bellfounder had trotted seventeen and a half miles in an. 
hour. Mr. Jaques did not say this in letters and figures, but he 
said it even more plainly in a picture. The basis of this decep- 
tion is found in the advertisement itself, where, in speaking of 
the speed of old Bellfounder in England, he says: " His 
owner challenged to perform with him seventeen miles ai]d a half 
in one hour, but it was not accepted." Here we have a possible 
challenge of the sire transmuted into an actual performance of 
the son, for the sole jDurpose of securing public patronage. 

There can be no doubt that this horse was a true representative 
of what was then known as the Norfolk Trotters and at this time 
designated as Hackneys or Cubs. Bellfounder was of a quiet, 
docile disposition, with a display of great nervous energy in his 
movements when aroused. His knee and hock action was high 
and showy, giving the impression of a great trotter, without, 
much speed. At several points his form was measurably repro- 
duced in Hambletonian, especially in his low, round withers and 
his great, meaty buttocks. In seeing these points so plainly de- 
veloped in his idol it is not remarkable that Mr. Kysdyk should 
have placed too high an estimate on Bellfounder blood as a factor 
in the American trotting horse. If he had thoughtfully asked 
himself the question, What has Bellfounder blood done in its 
own right in the way of getting trotters? the illusion would have 
vanished. 

Bellfounder was in the control of Mr. Jaques for six years, and 
never in my knowledge of trotting stallions have I known one so 
widely and successfully advertised. The name "Bellfounder" 
was heard and known every where. From 1829 to 1833, inclusive,, 
he was under the control of Mr. T. T. Kissam, of Long Island. 
After that time he seems to have gone "a-begging" wherever 
there seemed to be a chance to earn his oats. At last, at 
Jamaica, Long Island, he died, having made twenty-one seasons 
in this country — one more than Messenger. The question was 
once raised as to where Hambletonian got his aversion to the 
chestnut color, and it was flippantly assigned to Bellfounder. 
The truth is, quite a number of Bellfounder's get were chestnuts, 
perhaps as large a percentage as would naturally come from the 
average stallion. 



THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 399 

It is the testimony of several gentlemen who were familiar with 
trotting affairs in the time of the Bellfounclers, that a number of 
them were skillfully and persistently trained and none of them 
could trot faster than about 2:50. The one excejition to this fact so 
widely established is the case of the dam of Hambletonian. After 
this filly passed into the hands of Peter Seely he gave some at- 
tention irregularly to the development of her speed, and before 
he sold her he gav^o her two trials to saddle on the Union Course 
and she trotted in 2:43 and 2:41. As she was then but four years 
old it is safe to conclude that she would have made a trotter, be- 
yond all doubt. This is the only one, old or young, from the 
loins of Bellfounder that ever trotted so fast. I once put the 
question directly to Mr. Rysdyk as to whether the Kent Mare 
was as good and as fast as her dam. One Eye, and he promptly re- 
plied that One Eye was much the faster and greater mare. To 
this answer he added that One Eye, under the same circum- 
stances, would have been the equal of Lady Thorn or any other 
that ever lived. This may account for the superiority of the 
Kent Mare over all the other Bellfounders, and it may account 
for the superiority of Hambletonian over all other stallions. 

Bellfouxder (Brown's or Kissam's), was a bay horse, foaled 
1830, got by imported Bellfounder; dam Lady Alport, by Mam- 
brino, son of Messenger; grandam by Tippoo, son of Messenger; 
great-grandam by imported Messenger. With such breeding he 
should have been a great horse. lie was bred by Timothy T. 
Kissam, of Long Island, and sold along with a full brother one year 
younger, named Bellport, about 1834-5, to L. F. and A. B. Allen, 
of Buffalo, New York. Bellfounder was a bay horse, sixteen 
hands high, and Bellport was sixteen and one-half hands, but was 
poisoned and died at four years old. Bellfounder passed into 
the hands of some parties at Cleveland and then to Mr. Brown, of 
Columbus, Ohio, made most of his seasons in that portion of the 
State, and died September, 1860. This was altogether the most 
valuable son the imported horse left — indeed the only one that 
made any mark in the world. He was not much of a trotter and 
did not get trotters, but got. colts that Avere excellent types of 
the coach horse, and for that purpose was very highly esteemed. 
Some of his sons and daughters, especially the latter, are met 
with sometimes in trotting records as having i^roduced some- 
thing that had more or less speed. 

CoxQUEROR was a bay gelding, foaled 1842, and got by Lat- 



400 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

tonrett's Bellfounder, a grandson of the imported horse, and out 
of Lady McClain by imported Bellfounder, and she out of Lady 
Webber by Mambrino, and she out of a mare brouglit from 
Dutchess County and represented to be a daughter of imported 
Messenger. This gelding had been pounded about in slow races 
for years and had the reputation of being a stayer. In 1853 a 
match was made with him to trot a hundred miles in nine hours. 
The race was started and the horse won in 8h. 5om. and 53s., 
and he died three or four days afterward. This is the only in- 
stance that I know of in which the advocates of Hackney blood 
can point to a trotting record made in this or indeed in any 
other country. 

In closing the account of this family — for out of courtesy we 
have called it a "family" — we find we have nothing left but a 
name with nothing in it. The name that was more widely known 
than that of any other horse of his generation has now practi- 
cally ceased from the earth, with nobody so poor as to do it 
reverence. 

The type of horse now known as the "Hackney" is found 
chiefly in the shires bordering the northeastern coast of England 
— Norfolk, Lincoln and Yorkshire. The name now given is not 
only new but it is appropriate and applies to any one part of 
England as well as another, and applies to any one horse, suited 
to the general use of a Hack, as well as another, no difference 
what his blood or what his country. The name "Norfolk Trot- 
ter" fifty or a hundred years ago was often applied to horses of 
this type coming from that part of the country, but it did not 
follow that they were "trotters." In the discussions of the asso- 
ciation preceding the adoption of a name it was urged that the 
qualifying word "trotter" would imply the ability to trot fast, 
and as the material to be registered could not do this, it would 
subject the whole movement to ridicule and contempt. It was 
also urged that the name "Norfolk" would give that particular 
region an advantage over all other parts of England in the pros- 
pective sales of registered stock, and thus the old title was fully 
disposed of. When the name "cob" was suggested, it was con- 
ceded that it represented just what they had, but it was too com- 
mon, as everybody in all England, rich and poor, had "cobs." 
Then came the term "Hackney," which meant the same kind of 
a horse as the cob, but as it was not in such universal use it was 



THE OKLOFF TROTTER. 40i 

adopted. On this point it must be admitted that it is an honest 
name. 

The Hackney is a good horse for all the uses to which he is 
adapted. He is short on his legs and stout, with a good share of 
nervous energy. He is symmetrical, and, we might say, hand- 
some, if we can use that word without any show of fine breeding, 
for he is far short of the ideal blood horse. But he is not a sad- 
dle horse, he is not a hunter, he is not a runner, and he is not a 
trotter. As against these desirable and useful qualifications, he has 
been bred and trained when in action to jerk up his limbs to the 
highest point anatomically possible, and put them down again 
with a thud at a point but little removed from where he started. 
In this showy, undesirable action he exhausts his nervous energy, 
pounding the earth without covering much of the distance. In this 
excessive knee action every element of easy, graceful and rapid 
progression is wanting. This fad will have its day and then along 
with the barbarous excision of the caudal appendage they will 
disappear together as they came, and we will know them no more 
forever. 

There are two points in advocating the merits of the Hackney 
with which every Englishman is thoroughly familiar and which 
he will call to your attention on the slightest provocation: (1) 
Bellfounder was a Hackney and it Avas his blood that gave us the 
greatest trotting sire that the world has ever produced. This is 
the Englishman's estimate of Bellfounder when he has a Hackney 
for sale, and especially if the prospective purchaser be an Ameri- 
can. (2) He is descended from a long line of distinguished 
trotters. To the first of these reiterated and parrot-like claims 
an answer will be found in the chapter relating to that horse, 
where his twenty-one years of stud service have been carefully 
considered, and where he is shown to have been a monumental 
failure. In the second claim there is some truth and we must 
consider it very briefly. 

Of all the elements entering into the families of horses locally 
and indefinitely called Norfolk Trotters, there were two that 
might be looked upon as the founders — Useful Cub and Shales — 
for they were more conspicuous and valuable than any others. 
Mr. John Lawrence was not only a practical horseman, but he 
was the most intelligent and reliable of all the writers on the 
horse in the latter part of the last century. He was the only 
one who gave any attention to the trotter and trotting aifairs. 



402 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

He says: "To old Shales and Useful Cub the Isle of Ely, Cam- 
bridgeshire and Norfolk are indebted for their fame in the pro- 
duction of capital Hackneys." Useful Cub was bred by Thomas 
Jenkinson, of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, and was foaled about 
1865-70, and was got by a Suffolk cart horse, doubtless a light 
weight, and his dam was .by Golden Farmer, a son of the famous 
half-bred Sampson, that was the great-grandsire of Messenger 
and beat most of the best horses of his day. Mr, Lawrence knew 
Useful Cub well, and was beaten by him in Hyde Park. We 
have no details of this horse's performances, but it seems to be 
conceded that he trotted fifteen, sixteen and seventeen miles in 
the hour. Old Shales, or Scott's Shales, as he is sometimes 
called, is described by Lawrence as "the bastard son of Blank," 
son of Godolphin Arabian, but Mr. Euren, the compiler of the 
Hackney Stud Book maintains that he was the son of .Blaze and 
not the son of Blank. The reasons given for this change I dO' 
not remember, but they would have to be well founded before I 
could throw overboard the contemporaneous evidence of Mr. 
Lawrence. It will not do to say that Mr. Lawrence mistook the 
name Blaze for Blank and so wrote it by mistake, for he knew 
all about both horses. This distinction, however, is of but little- 
practical value. The horses Shales and Useful Cub were both fast, 
and successful trotters, in their day, and they both became dis- 
tinguished sires of trotters. By this I do not mean that they 
were the sires of all the trotters, for there were many that were 
wholly unknown in their breeding. 

Judging from the numbers of leading contests that were re- 
ported in the Sporting Magazine and other publications, we must 
conclude that trotting contests reached their height as well in 
numbers as in public interest about the last decade in the last, 
century. The contests were all to saddle, on the road, and the 
leading ones were made under the watch and over a long distance 
of ground, specifying such or such a distance to be made inside 
of an hour. To form a correct estimate of the speed of those' 
horses, I will copy one paragraph, entire, from the description 
given by Mr. Lawrence concerning his own mare Betty Bloss: 

" My own brown mare, known by the name of Betty Bloss, was the slowest, 
of all the capital trotters, but at five years old trotted fifteen miles in one 
hour, carrying fourteen stone, altbougii fairly mistress of no more than ten. 
She afterward trotted sixteen miles within the hour, with ten stone, with, 
much ease to herself and her rider. She was nearly broken down at four 



THE OKLOFF TROTTER. 4,03 

years old, had bad feet, and, besides, too much blood for a trotter, having beea 
got by Sir Hale's Commoner, out of a tbree-part-bred daughter of Rattle, son 
of Snip." 

In this paragraph, from the best-informed man of his genera- 
tion, it will be noted incidentally that the cry, "no more running 
blood in the trotter," is not new, but more than a hundred years 
old. The best performances were about sixteen miles in the 
hour, but there was an occasional one that reached sixteen and 
a half. A black gelding called Archer was recognized as the fast- 
est of that period, and on one occasion under a stop watch he trotted 
the second one of two miles in a little less than three minutes. 
From my gleanings I find but a single instance from which we 
might be able to approximate the money value of trotting horses of 
that day, and this is given as a phenomenal price, viz.. Marshland 
Shales, a paternal grandson of the original Shales and out of a 
mare by Hue and Cry. He had beaten Reed's Driver in a match 
of seventeen miles for 200 guineas. He was foaled 1802 and in 
1812 he was sold at auction for 3,051 guineas — $15,255. He was a. 
great horse, but this price was just as startling to Englishmen of 
that day as the $105,000 was in our own day, when Axtell was 
sold. This seems to have been the culmination of the "boom" 
in Norfolk Trotters, and from then till the present there has been 
a steady deterioration in the trotting step of the Norfolk horse. 
In the earlier part of this period of eighty or ninety years, possi- 
bly some exceptions may be found, but they are only individual 
exceptions and do not controvert the broad fact that must be ap- 
parent to all observers. They had been breeding and training 
their horses to strike their chins with their knees — the up-and- 
down motion — instead of getting away and covering some ground 
in their action. I have stood and watched scores of them in the 
show-ring, on their native heath, with their grooms at the ends 
of long lines running and yelling like wild Indians to rouse up 
their horses, and they called this training the trotters. When I 
privately expressed the wish that saddles might be put on a few 
of the best and the ring cleared so that the trotting action might 
be studied, I was very kindly and politely assured that they did 
not show their trotters that way in England. Thus with the 
taut check-rein, the long leading-line and the whoops of the 
groom they got the up-and-down action upon the perfection of 
which the prizes were awarded. This explained why the splendid. 



404 THE HORSE OF AMERICA, 

foundation of a breed had been lost by non-use and why England 
had produced no trotters in the past fifty or eighty years. 

While our English cousins know they have no trotting horses 
of their own they seem to be exceedingly anxious, possibly for 
commercial reasons, to make it appear that the American trot- 
ting horse is the lineal descendant of the Norfolk Trotter. This 
effort is not restricted to the idle twaddle about Bell ounder, 
which everybody on this side of the Atlantic estimates at its true 
value, but it has taken an oflEicial and wider range, which, trifling 
though it be, my duty as a historian impels me to expose. Mr. 
Henry F. Euren, the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, wrote 
to the Commissioner of Agriculture, at Washington, D. C, in 
1888, taking exceptions to some conclusions reached in an article 
written by Mr. Leslie E. Macleod, in my office, on "The National 
Horse of America," and published in the report of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture for 1887; Mr. Euren claiming that the Amer- 
ican trotting horse came originally from Norfolk, in England. 
In proof of this he says: "I beg to inclose you a cutting which 
confirms my idea." And now for the "cutting" which he offers 
as proof: 

"It appears from an Act of Parliament, passed December 6, 1748, in the 
T>egislature of the State of New Jersey, America, that on and after the publi- 
cation of this Act, all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, 
or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are 
hereafter expressly provided for by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared 
public nuisances, provided always that at all fairs that are or may be held with- 
in this province, and that on the first working day after the three great festivals 
of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc." 

The act passed by the provincial legislature of the colony of 
New Jersey in 1748 embraced very stringent regulations against 
dice, lotteries, etc., as well as horse racing. It is divided into 
several sections, and at Section 4 we reach the provision against 
racing as follows: 

"And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that after ihe 
publication of this Act, all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre 
or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times 
as are hereafter expressly provided for and allowed by this Act), shall be and 
are hereby declared public nuisances, and shall be prosecuted as public 
nuisances, in manner hereinbefore directed. Provided always, and it is the 
true intent and meaning of this Act, that at all fairs that are or may be held 
within this province, and that on the first working day after the three grand 
festivals of Christmas, Eater and Whitsuntide, etc., etc." 



THE ORLOFF TROTTEK. 4U5 

These quotations are sufficiently extended to afford an unmis- 
takable comparison, and on their face evidence that cannot be 
doubted for one moment that they both purport to be copied 
from the same act of the Jersey Colonial legislature. In the 
oflScial printed copy which is before me as I write, the mandate 
is against "all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for 
lucre or gain." In Mr. Euren's ''cutting" the mandate is 
against '*all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or 
gain," etc. The substitution of the word "Norfolk" instead of 
"horse racing," is in the nature of a forgery, and I cannot be- 
lieve that Mr. Euren would be guilty of any such execrable 
piece of trickery. It must have been conceived and written by 
some horse sharp who was trying to sell a Hackney to an Ameri- 
can with a pocket full of money, and after he had effected his sale 
he could mutter quietly, when at a safe distance from his victim, 
the couplet from "Hudibras:" 

"The paltry story is untrue 
And forged to cheat such gulls as you." 

Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Euren, he indorsed the 
trick, and not only indorsed it, but sent it to the Commissioner 
of Agriculture with the hope and possible expectation that it 
would receive public recognition and become part of the horse 
history of this country. Did he not know that somebody would 
be nosing round among the old laws and expose the dirty decep- 
tion? But, on the basis that Mr. Euren was deceived by this 
wretched interpolation of a fraud into the law, could he not see 
that the date of the law — 1748 — Avas before old Shales or Useful 
Cub was foaled, and long before the very first "Norfolk trotter" 
was ever heard of either in Norfolk or in any other part of Eng- 
land? 

The exposure of this foolish attempt, wherever it originated, to 
incorporate into an old New Jersey statute a fiction, or a forgery, 
as it may be called, carries with it a punishment that should be 
felt by the most unscrupulous of horse sharps; but when we find 
it unequivocally indorsed and given to the world as true by 
the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, it destroys all confi- 
dence in the accuracy and reliability of that work. This is a 
misfortune that the friends of the Hackney in England as well as 
in this country must feel as a blow at the value of the whole 
interest. Opinions may change with new light, and opposing: 



406 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

conclusions may be honestly reached from different standpoints, 
but running against a fixed and cei'tain date, as in this case, is 
like running against a two-edged sword. 

In conclusion, the Hackney is merely the dear-bought and far- 
fetched fashion of the hour. A few years ago he was "something 
new in horses," just *as the modiste has "something new in 
dresses." He was found in England, where there are no flies, 
without a tail, and as that was the fashion in England we must 
bave horses in America without tails, notwithstanding the mil- 
lions of torments they have to endure without the natural means 
of defense. As hack-a-bouts they are good horses, but their 
"churn-dasher" style of action will never become acceptable to 
the American people. 

A few years since a quite persistent attempt, backed by un- 
limited wealth and all the prestige that metropolitan "fashion" 
and "society" could bestow, was made, particularly in New 
York, to create a Hackney "boom" in America. All that element 
in the social life of our great cities that affects a disdain for 
things distinctively American, and particularly for American 
horses, and that glories in the stultifying habit of aping things 
"English, ye know," took up the Hackney fad with unbounded 
■enthusiasm. As a park and road horse the American horse — the 
incomparable trotting-bred driver — was to be incontinently 
crowded out of the driveways, the markets and the shows. The 
National Horse Show Association, whose annual show at Madi- 
son Square Garden is the great social fete of the year in New 
York, lent all its powerful influence to forward the Hackney 
"boom," which was, it must in fairness be said, consistent; for 
the miscalled National Horse Show has always catered more to 
foreign horses and foreign customs in horsemanship than to 
American horses and horsemen. Men of great wealth and prom- 
inence established extensive Hackney studs, imported famous 
prize-winning stallions and mares, and there was only one thing 
left to be done, and that was to convert the American people to 
the belief that the driving horse they had been breeding and 
■developing with a special purpose and care — the fleetest and most 
versatile harness horse in the world — was inferior to an imported 
nondescript. In that attempt the Hackney advocates have failed 
in America as completely as did Mr. Blunt and others in Eng- 
land, when they sought to make racing men believe that the 
Arab was a better race horse than the English thoroughbred. 



THE OllLOFF TROTTER. 407 

Perhaps nothing illustrates better what I have called the 
versatility of the trotter than this contest with the Hackney in 
the latter's own especial field — if he may be said to have any. 
Of course there could be no contest bstweenthe horse of a special 
breed and the nondescript as a harness horse for speed or useful- 
ness on the road, whether the distance were half a mile or a 
hundred miles; but in the show-ring the Hackney men claimed 
absolute pre-eminence for their "high-acting" horses. They 
did not dare contest with the trotter in the matter of road speed, 
so to have any contest at all the trotting horse men had to 
"carry the war into Africa." This they have done with a venge- 
ance. They have taken the pure-bred trotting horse, dressed 
him in the fashion dictated by the Hackney "faddists," taught 
him the Hackney tricks, the preposterous Hackney action and all 
that, and have beaten the Hackneys not once but time and again 
right on their own ground, viz., at the National Horse Show in 
Madison Square Garden. In almost all cases in classes where 
trotters have been admitted to compete with Hackneys, the 
former have carried off the honors within the past two years. 
Many notable instances might be cited, but one will suffice. At 
the National Horse Show, 1896, a class was offered for "half-bred 
Hackneys," sires to be shown with four of their get. The Hack- 
ney end of the argument was upheld by Mr. A. J. Cassatt's re- 
nowned prize-winner, imported Cadet, with four of his get. 
Against him was entered the well-known trotting sire Almont 
Jr., 2:26, with four of his get, and though the judges were gen- 
tlemen identified more or less with the Hackney interest, so 
superior in form, action and style were the four youngsters by 
the trotting sire that they carried away the honors from the 
chosen progeny of one of the most noted Hackney show horses in 
the Avorld. 

In the sale ring this verdict has been corroborated. The 
highest prices — the record figures — paid in the fashionable New 
York market for park horses, "high steppers," or by whatever 
name the merely spectacular harness horse may from time to 
time be called, have been paid for trotting-bred horses: and in 
advertised sales of "Hackneys" it has become somewhat common 
to encounter half-trotting-bred and full-trotting-bred horses. 

While no genuine American and horseman can without regret 
see a typical American horse mutilated and his action perverted 
in the manner required to bring him into "Hackney" classes at 



408 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

the National Horse Show, or in the markets where New York 
society people buy their stub-tailed horses, it is some compensa- 
tion to know that these experiments have demonstrated the 
superiority of the American-bred horse even in the field claimed 
as especially that of the Hackney. And the Hackney "fad" in 
America, while it lasted, accomplished a good end in so far as it 
directed the attention of American breeders more to the impor- 
tance of form and style, and taught them that in their own trot- 
ting families they have the material from which may best be 
produced, in form and style and quality as well as in speedy 
pre-eminently the most excellent park horses in the world. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 

Tendency to misrepresentation — The Bald Galloway and Darley Arabian — 
Godolphin Arabian — Early experiences with trotting pedigrees — Mr. 
Backnian's honest methods — Shanghai Mary — Capt. Rynders and Widow 
Machree — Woodburn Farm and its pedigree methods — Victimized by 
"horse sharps" and pedigree makers — Alleged pedigree of Pilot Jr. 
conclusively overthrown — Pedigrees of Edwin Forrest, Norman, Bay 
Chief and Black Rose — Maud S.'s pedigree exhaustively considered — Cap- 
tain John W. Russell never owned the mare Maria Russell — The deadly 
parallel columns settle it. 

A FEW years more than forty have slipped away since I first 
began to give serious attention to the subject of horse history 
and to contribute an occasional article to the press on that sub- 
ject. Among my very earliest observations, or I might say, ex- 
periences, was the realization of the fact that exaggeration as a 
habit of thought and utterance was practically universal among 
horsemen. Sometimes I have thought this tendency to the un- 
true resulted from the ammoniacal exhalations of the stable, but 
this thought is not a satisfactory solution, for some of the great- 
est liars about horses have never known anything about stables. 
Then, again, I have thought that a really skillful metaphysician 
might write a learned disquisition of the question and satisfy 
himself as to the cause of this moral delinquency, but nobody 
Avould be able to understand him when he had completed it. 
This wretched vice, so prevalent everywhere, was not restricted 
to the professional country *'hoss jockey," ready to "swap" with 
every man he met on the road, but it reached up to men of 
otherwise excellent character, and these men would "stretch the 
blanket" tremendously about the blood and other qualities of 
the horses they were selling. The only way we can account for 
an otherwise honest and truthful man exaggerating the merits 
and blood of his horses must be (1) in the fact that he has be- 
come attached to him and thinks him better than he is, or it may 
be (2) that he bought with a false pedigree and without examin- 



410 THE HORSE OF AMERICA, 

ing it, he assumes it is true and represents it accordingly. But 
underlying all this, the representation cannot be disproved, and 
(3) it may add to the market value of the horse. 

l^his weakness of human nature, so pervasive of all interests 
connected with the horse, did not originate in this country, but 
came from the old world. We inherit it from our ancestors. 
"The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children's teeth 
are set on edge." Take the case of the little bald-faced, pacing- 
bred horse known in the old records as "The Bald Galloway" and 
while it is not probable he had a single drop of Saracenic blood 
in his veins, he is fitted out with a grand pedigree, full of that 
blood. Although I have already referred to this horse as an ex- 
emplification of the dishonesty of the early records of English 
pedigrees, I will again look at it in a more specific manner. He 
was nothing more nor less than a little native horse, belonging 
to a tribe of noted pacers in the southwestern part of Scotland 
and in the northern part of England. These Galloways were 
probably the very last remnant of pacers to be found in Great 
Britain. He is represented in the books to have been by a horse 
called "St. Victor's Barb;" dam by Whynot; grandam a Royal 
Mare. The Bald Galloway was foaled not later than 1708, and it 
was probably a few years earlier. His reputed sire, "St. Victor's 
Barb," is not to be found anywhere and was probably fictitious. 
His dam was represented to be by Whynot, and this horse was not 
foaled till 1744 — thirty-six years after his grandson was foaled. 
The grandam is given as a "Royal Mare," which in that day 
was a convenient way of rounding out a pedigree, just as we now 
attempt to round them out when we know nothing of the blood 
by saying "dam thoroughbred." "The Bald Galloway" was one 
of the most successful stallions of his day, and yet he was noth- 
ing in the world but a good representative of the old pacing Gal- 
loways of that portion of Scotland then called Galloway. He 
was low in stature, but he was esteemed as one of the greatest 
and most valuable racing sires of his generation. One of his 
sons — the Carlisle Gelding — was- still a race horse when he was 
eighteen years old. 

"The Darley Arabian" was contemporaneous with the Bald 
Galloway, and they commenced service in England about the 
same year. It is said he was brought from Aleppo, in Syria, or, 
perhaps I had better say Asia Minor. Aleppo is but a short dis- 
tance from the borders of ancient Cappadocia and Cilicia, coun- 



INVESTIGATION" OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 411 

tries that were famous in history for the great numbers of fine 
horses that they produced far more than a thousand years before 
the first horse was taken to Arabia. This horse is called an 
"Arabian," and in the brief record of his importation we have 
the same venerable "chestnut" served up to us that has served 
so many generations of speculators in "Arabian blood." The 
record says that Mr. Darley had a brother who was an agent for 
merchandise abroad, who "became a member of a hunting club, 
by which means he acquired interest to procure this horse." 
This "gag" has been played too often to give eclat to horses 
claimed to be brought from Arabia, in the past two hundred 
years, to have much effect on the minds of people who have any 
sense. That it required great social or political influence to in- 
duce the old Arab sheik to part with him, was intended merely 
to secure the attention of prospective customers to his superla- 
tive excellence in order to obtain their patronage. This horse 
probably never was within five hundred miles of the nearest part 
of Arabia, and to call him an Arabian is a misnomer wholly un- 
justifiable. He came from a country where horses were abundant 
and cheap on all sides, and of a quality far superior to any 
Arabian. He was simply a Turk, he was for sale, and it required 
no influence to buy him except the contents of the purchaser's 
purse. This horse has always been classed as one of the twa 
great founders of the English race horse. His progeny from 
well-bred mares were not numerous, and his greatest distinction 
is in the fact that he was the sire of Flying Childers. In accord- 
ance with the truth, he should be known in the records as. 
"Darley 's Turk." 

The horse bearing the dishonest misnomer of "Godolphin 
Arabian" was really the greatest regenerator and upbuilder of 
the running horse that England ever possessed. There seems to 
be no historical doubt that he was brought from France, and that 
is all we know about his origin and early history. It may be laid 
down, therefore, as a safe proposition, that the odds are as a thou- 
sand to one that he was a French horse. The only evidence that 
can ever be furnished as to the strain of blood that he may have 
possessed must be found and studied in his portrait, which ap- 
pears in this volume. I believe this portrait to be a correct and 
true delineation of the horse, and there is not a single lineament 
in or about it that indicates the blood of either the Arabian or 
the Barb. His pedigree is in his picture, and, from what is- 



412 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Jcnown in history and from what has been preserved in art, in- 
stead of "Godolphin Arabian" his true title should be "Godolphin 
Frenchman." But this subject has been discussed at greater 
length in the chapter on the English Race Horse, to which my 
reader is here referred. 

In the chapter on the American Race Horse, I think sufficient 
.attention has been given to the frauds and impossibilities that 
are to be found everywhere in the extended pedigrees of our own 
running horses to satisfy any one that the remote extensions of 
pedigrees are a great mass of dishonest rubbish, with scarcely a 
.speck of truth to be found. I will, therefore, pass along to the 
<;onsideration of some of the difficulties, of the same nature, that 
have been developed in investigating and recording the pedigrees 
of the American Trotting Horse. In entering the untrodden 
wilderness of trotting-horse history it became the ambition of 
my life to reach the truth in every possible instance and to cut 
off and reject all frauds wherever they showed their heads. This 
meant war from the beginning with a great many horsemen, but 
it also meant the enthusiastic support of a great many honest 
men. The trouble, at this point, was in the fact that a number 
of prominent, wealthy and influential breeders insisted upon 
their right to state their pedigrees in their own way and thus 
compel me to indorse them by inserting them in the Trotting 
Register. When at work on the early volumes of the Register, 
especially the first, if a man of unblemished reputation and intel- 
ligence sent me a list of his stock to be registered, I assumed 
that he had too much regard for his reputation and standing as 
a breeder to print a lot of pedigrees in his catalogue that he did 
not knoto to be correct, and hence I accepted many a pedigree 
that was based upon fiction. In course of time it began to dawn 
upon my understanding that there were many men in the world 
of unsullied reputation, as they were known in their business 
relations, who would stand up boldly for a fiction or a fraud in 
the pedigrees of their stock. It is but just to say that all the men 
who uttered fraudulent pedigrees were not equally guilty, for in 
some cases the owners had been victimized by unscrupulous 
rogues from whom they had purchased, and in others they had 
been betrayed by the still more unscrupulous rogues whom they 
had employed to make up their catalogues on the supposition 
that they were capable and honest. This state of things soon 
•developed another line of thought and observation in my mind 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 413 

which evolved a rule by which I could determine the difference be • 
tween the degrees of honesty among horsemen. One man, when 
a fiction in a pedigree was pointed out, would go to work and 
carefully investigate it; while another would hang and higgle 
about it and finally investigate, not to find the truth, but to find 
how many old rummies, swipes and negroes he could get to- 
gether, who would support his claim and swear to it for a half- 
dollar each. The first man investigates to find the truth wher- 
ever it may lead; while the second man investigates merely, not 
to find the truth, but to find some kind of evidence to sustain 
the untruth. In the everyday affairs of life these two men may 
stand on the same plane, but, at heart, the one is honest and the 
other a rogue. 

When Mr. Charles Backman founded the great Stonyford 
breeding farm in Orange County, New York, he was an excellent 
horseman, in a general sense, although he did not pretend to 
know much about pedigrees. About 1869 he placed all his pedi- 
grees in my hands with the request that I would give them a 
careful examination, strike out everything that was wrong and 
note everything that was doubtful or uncertain, that it might be 
investigated and the truth fully determined, no difference where 
it might lead. Many investigations followed which were con- 
ducted by his secretary, Mr. Shipman, either by mail or 
by personal visitation — so many, indeed, that Mr. Shipman 
became quite an expert in this kind of difficult work. As 
an illustration of the methods pursued, one instance will 
serve to show how it was done, and more than this, it is a 
very interesting history in itself. In the first volume of the 
Register I had entered Green Mountain Maid, the dam of the 
famous Electioneer and all that family, as "by Harry Clay, dam 
said to be by Lexington." This was the form in which Mr. 
Backman had received the pedigree, except that it was stated 
positively and without any "said to be" that the dam was by 
Lexington, the great running horse. After a time I called Mr. 
Backman's attention to this "said to be" and suggested that if 
the mare was really a daughter of Lexington she could certainly 
be traced and established. The next day, Mr. Shipman started 
to Western New York and to Ohio. On his trip he found the 
mare had been known in AVestern New York as the "Angelica 
Mare" and afterward as "Shanghai Mary," that she was a trot- 
ter, well known locally, and that she had trotted a race and won 



414 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

at a state fair, in very fast time for tliat day. She had been 
brought from Ohio by some sheep -dealers, who were able to give 
her exact age, and it was thus found that she was older than her 
reputed sire. Several expert horsemen, from a picture secured 
by Mr. Shipman on his trip, have not hesitated to give it as a 
strong conviction that she belonged to the Cadmus family, in 
Southern Ohio. In the last two or three years a correspondent 
of the Chicago Hovfie Review brings out some local facts that 
make it almost morally certain that she was bred by Goldsmith 
Coffein, of Red Lion, Ohio, and that she was got by Iron's Cad- 
mus, the sire of the great Pocahontas. The final nail has not 
been clinched in establishing this pedigree, and probably never 
will be, but the circumstances are so fully detailed as to scarcely 
leave room for a doubt that she was a half-sister to the famous 
Pocahontas. 

From what has here been said about the methods of Mr. 
Backman, the leading breeder of that Deriod, in the North, 
it should not be inferred that all Northern breeders were 
like him. The first real battle I ever had against fraudulent 
pedigrees originated in Orange County, New York, with the 
notorious Captain Rynders, in which the pedigree of the once 
famous Widow Machree, the dam of Aberdeen, was involved. The 
pedigree of this mare had been registered as obtained from Mr. 
James W. Hoyt, who once owned her, and her dam was given as 
by Durland's Messenger Duroc. When Aberdeen came before 
the public for patronage, his owner, Rynders, advertised him as 
out of Widow Machree and she out of a mare by Abdallah. 
This was challenged as untrue by Mr. Guy Miller and Mr. Joseph 
Gavin, of Orange County, and I was called upon to demand the 
evidence upon which the change had been made from Messenger 
Duroc to Abdallah. As a matter of course "the fat was in the 
fire" at once, and out came Rynders with a terrific explosion of 
anger, abounding in threats and denunciations against anybody 
and everybody who attempted to interfere with his "business." 
The good names of Guy Miller and Joseph Gavin carried too 
much weight as against that of Isaiah Rynders, and, as his last 
card, he brought out a duly and formally executed affidavit, 
sworn to by a man whose name I will not here mention, stating 
that he bred the Abdallah mare; all of which was the very rankest 
perjury, which was so easily exposed that it did Rynders far 
more harm than good. At last the whole truth came out in a 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 415 

iorm that was complete and conclusive, showing that the mare 
in question was bred by Garrett Duryea, of Bethel, Sullivan 
County, New York, and was got by a horse known as Pintler's 
Bolivar. Eynders had been a leader in New York politics so 
long that he knew just how to manage things where the truth 
must be suppressed. He was a liberal advertiser, the two sport- 
ing papers were needy for patronage in that line, and their 
oolumns were closed to any and all communications against his 
side of the question. But all this failed to suppress the truth 
and uphold a fraud, and I doubt whether there is a man living 
to-day who does not believe that the fight was fairly and honestly 
won. This contest taught me a very important lesson, and that 
was, that if I expected to fight bogus pedigrees I must have a 
channel of communication of my own. Hence Wallace's Monthly, 
which, in its day, was not only able to expose bogus pedigrees, 
but lead intelligent thought and experience on all breeding sub- 
jects, till it fell into the hands of an unscrupulous neocracy, 
where it soon died for want of brains. 

Having given a very brief illustration of the methods which 
governed Mr. Backman in ascertaining and determining the 
blood elements which entered into the foundation of his great 
breeding establishment, and the care and promptness with which 
errors were eliminated, it is now in order to take a glance at the 
methods pursued at the great Woodburn Farm, founded by R. 
A. Alexander in Kentucky. These were the two earliest estab- 
lishments, of any prominence, for breeding the trotter, in the 
whole country. The one was the northern center of the interest 
and the other the southern, and they together may be considered 
as representative of both sections. Mr. Alexander, I think, was 
reared and educated in Scotland, and there inherited a large 
estate. Upon coming into this inheritance he determined to 
transfer his interests to Kentucky, where he bought up a cluster 
of farms and shaped them for the purpose of building up a mam- 
moth establishment for the breeding of all varieties of domestic 
animals of the highest type and excellence. I think his fancy 
ran more to Short Horn cattle than to any other line of breed- 
ing, probably because he knew more about the value and merit of 
the different tribes of that breed than he did of any other variety. 
The founding of an establishment so immense, and for the grand 
purpose of the breeding and improving the varieties of domestic 
animals, was the agricultural sensation of the period, and every- 



416 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

body, from one end of the land to the other, soon knew of and. 
applauded the great enterprise. There had been great enter- 
prises on similar lines before, and there have been even greater 
ones since, bnt Mr. Alexander's Woodburn Farm, of Kentucky, 
may always be looked upon as the real pioneer in stock breeding 
on a large and methodical scale, and without limit as to re- 
sources. A university education in Scotland, with all its train- 
ing in the refinements of logical distinctions, did not bring to 
Mr. Alexander a knowledge of the pedigrees of Kentucky horses, 
nor did it train him in the detection of the tricks of Kentucky 
horse dealers, and thus as a purchaser of his breeding stock he 
was looked upon by the "sharps" as a fat goose, ready to be 
plucked. After these "sharj)s" had secured their pluckings, 
Mr. Alexander called in a professional pedigreeist to put the 
lines of the blood he had purchased in order and print a cata- 
logue. This "professional" was not a pedigree tracer, for he 
never traced anything in his life, but a pedigree maher, and 
wherever he thought that anything was needed he added it, 
whether true or not, and it went to the world in that form. This, 
is more conspicuously true in the department of trotting pedi- 
grees, as will appear below. Thus the acts of an incapable and 
dishonest employee were given the indorsement of an honorable 
and eminent name; falsehoods were made to appear as truths;, 
counterfeits were put in circulation that are still circulating as. 
genuine coin, with many people. Under the circumstances, Mr. 
Alexander could hardly be blamed, for, knowing nothing of such 
matters of his own knowledge, he employed what he supposed 
was the best authority then to be found. For my own part, 
when I came to register the Woodburn stock, I was ready ta 
accept as true whatever I found in the catalogue, believing that 
Mr. Alexander was incapable of publishing to the world a misrep- 
resentation. In this estimate of his character I was right, and 
I have never changed my opinion on that point, but when I came 
to examine the structure of his catalogue I found there was rot- 
ten wood all through it. A few examples that have been care- 
fully investigated will serve to show the value of the work done 
by the "pedigree maker" for Mr. Alexander. 

Pilot Jr. was a gray horse, foaled 1844, was got by Old 'Pacing 
Pilot and attained the distinction of being the head of a well- 
known family of trotters. He was foaled 1844, bred by Angereau 
G-ray, and owned a number of years by Glasgow & Heinsohn, of 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGKEES. 417 

Louisville, Kentucky. He was kept a number of years about 
Lexington, Kentucky, by Dr. Herr, Mr. Bradley, and perhaps 
others, and always advertised as "by Pilot (the pacer), dam 
Nancy Poj)e, grandam Nancy Taylor." Nobody then ever pre- 
tended to know what horse was the sire of either Nancy Pope or 
Nancy Taylor. He was then owned by the parties who afterward 
sold him to Mr. Alexander, and it is evident they did not then 
know anything about the sires of these mares. Mr. Alexander 
bought him in 185<S, and immediately his "pedigree maker" 
furnished the sires of these two mares; Nancy Pope was given as 
by Havoc, son of Sir Charles, and Nancy Taylor as by imported 
Alfred. The controversy about this pedigree was long and 
sharp, the one side, headed by the modern management at Wood- 
burn, as usual laboring to sustain the infallibility of the Wood- 
burn catalogues, and the other to reach the exact truth, what- 
ever it might be. The Board of Censors of the National Breeders' 
Association sent out a call for information on certain abstract 
points and finally reached a decision as follows: (1) That Havoc, 
the reputed sire of Nancy Pope, the dam of Pilot Jr., died in 
1828. (3) That Nancy Pope was not foaled till 1833. (3) That 
the breeding of Nancy Taylor, the dam of Nancy Pope, was un- 
kjiown. These dates were fixed by undoubted evidence, and, as 
afterward developed, another might have been added with equal 
authenticity. Imported Alfred, the reputed sire of Nancy Tay- 
lor, was not imj)orted till several years after Nancy Taylor was 
foaled, and thus it Avas clearly shown by the absolutely insupera- 
ble difficulties of dates that both the sires inserted in the pedi- 
gree were nothing more than very stupid fictions. 

Edwin Forrest seems to have held second phice in the list of 
stallions in the Woodburn Stud at that period, and the remote 
extensions of his pedigree were also fictitious. His grandam 
was represented to be by Duroc, the famous son of imported 
Diomed, and his great-grandam by imported Messenger. The 
first two crosses were technically inacurately stated, but the 
second two, as given here, were purely fictitious. 

Norman, the third stallion in the catalogue, had his sire cor- 
rectly given as the Morse Horse, but his dam was given as by 
Jersey Highlander and his grandam as by Bishop's Hamble- 
tonian, son of Messenger, both of which were wholly fictitious. 
His dam was by a horse called Magnum Bonum, a representative 
of a family of that name, and that is all that is known of his 



418 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

pedigree. A full showing of this pedigree will be found in the 
'•Trotting Register," Vol. III. 

Bay Chief was a bay son of Mambrino Chief, with a bald face, 
and was often called Bald Chief. He was the sensational trotter 
of the whole Mambrino Chief family, and I believe it is true that 
when four years old he showed a half-mile on Mr. Alexander's 
track in 1:08 and repeated in 1:08|^. In the catalogue he is 
given as foaled in 1859, got by Mambrino Chief, dam by Keokuk, 
son of imj)orted Truffle; grandam a thoroughbred mare by Stara- 
boul Arabian. As this was found in Mr. Alexander's catalogue 
I took it for granted it must be true, but I never had heard of a 
running horse called Keokuk before, and I kept hunting for ever 
so many years without finding hide nor hair of him, until 1885, 
when the whole mystery was developed. Mr. Richard Johnson, 
of Scott County, Kentucky, had business interests in Keokuk, 
Iowa, in the early fifties, probably locating land warrants, and he 
bought a pair of mares in Keokuk to travel over the prairies, and 
when he was through with his work lis brought the team home 
with him to Scott County. He knew nothing whatever of the 
breeding of those mares, but they were a good pair of drivers 
and one of them was quite a smart roadster that he called "Old 
Keokuk." He bred this mare, Keokuk, in 1858 to Mambrino 
Chief, and in 1859 she produced the colt called Bay Chief. In 
1862 he was bred to some sixteen or eighteen mares, and the fall 
of that year Mr. Alexander bought the colt at public auction, 
paying one thousand dollars for him. He was taken to Wood- 
burn, put in training and never covered any more mares. In the 
spring of 1865 he was killed in a raid of Southern troops upon 
the horse stock at Woodburn. (For further particulars of this 
little sketch the reader is referred to Wallace's Montlily for 1885, 
page 285.) To fix up a pedigree for the material side of this 
colt Avas no easy matter, but Mr. Alexander's "pedigree maker" 
proved himself fully equal to the occasion. There was the nasty 
name Keokuk fastened to the old mare, and it would stick as 
ti^ht as wax to the end of her days, coming from a region where 
there was no drop of running blood; so he made a "thorough- 
bred" horse, right on the spot, and gave him the name of Keokuk, 
which would account for the name of the mare, and pronounced 
him a son of imported Truffle. To supply a "thoroughbred" 
grandam was comparatively easy, for Mr. Johnson had long been 
a resident of Scott County, and the horse Stamboul had been kept 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 419 

in that county, hence there could be no doubt tluit she was a 
"thoroughbred" daughter of that horse. With this review of 
the misfoi'tunes of Mr. Alexander in placing the arrangement 
and, I might say, care of his pedigrees, in dishonest hands, we 
will pass whatever may remain of his early stallions, and take a 
glance at some of the pedigrees of his brood mares. 

Black Rose proved to be one of the best brood mares ever 
owned at Woodburn. I am told she was a pacer, and certainly 
all that is known of her blood was pacing blood. She was sought 
after and procured by Mr. Alexander because she had produced 
several trotters, and it can be read all through his purchases for 
the trotting stud, that he had undoubting confidence in the 
theory that trotters must come from trotters. When this mare 
first appeared in the Woodburn catalogue no dam was given to 
her, but meantime the "pedigree maker" had come around, and 
the next year she was fitted out with the folloAving, in fine style. 

" Black Rose.'bl. m., foaled about 1847 ; got by Tom Teenier ; dam by Can- 
non's Whip ; g. d. by Robin Gray, son of imp. Royalist." 

■The pedigree stood in this form a number of years, and proba- 
bly would still be so standing had it not been that in trying to 
learn something more about the sire, Tom Teemer, I received 
some intimations that made me doubtful about the maternal side. 
On a certain occasion I asked Mr. E. S. Veech, of Kentucky, what 
he knew about it, and he replied that he had made a trip to 
Clark County for no other purpose than to trace and investigate 
the pedigree of Black Rose, and he was not able to get a single 
syllable of information about her dam, any more than if she never 
had a dam. Some time afterward I wrote to Mr, Brodhead, 
manager at Woodburn, inquiring where tlie pedigree of Black 
Rose as given and perpetuated in the Woodburn catalogues came 
from and on what basis it rested. He replied promptly and 
briefly that Mr. Veech had made a trip to Clark County in search 
of this pedigree and the result of that search was what appeared 
in the catalogue. These are the facts, substantially, as given 
me by these two gentlemen, and this is the first time I have ever 
given them to the public. I have, known Mr. Veech intimately 
and trustingly for twenty-eight years and I know him to be em- 
inently truthful. I have not known Mr. Brodhead so long, and if 
he had not published the fraudulent extension of this pedigree 
in his catalogues every year for more than ten years, before Mr. 



420 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Veech made his trip to Clark County, I might at least express 
my sympathy with him in having so bad a memory. Mr. Brod- 
head had nothing to do with either tlie original construction or 
utterance of this fraud, for he was not then connected with the 
management of Woodburn. My readers can employ their own 
terms in characterizing, as it deserves, the fraudulent act of 
manufacturing a pedigree out of whole cloth; and they can also 
exercise their own ethical discrimination in determining whether 
the man who executes the fraud is any worse than the man who 
maintains and supports it after he knows it is fraudulent. 

We pass on to Sally Kussell, the grandam of Maud S. It is 
not a pleasant task to review an old controversy, whatever it 
might bring to light; but a controversy which involves the true 
lines of descent of so great a family as that of Maud S., Nutwood, 
Lord Kussell, etc., is worth preserving for the enlightenment of 
future generations. It all turns upon the breeding of Sally 
Russell and the identity of her breeder. She was a little chest- 
nut mare, represented to have been foaled 1850, got by Boston 
and out of Maria Russell, by Rattler, and so on, claimed to be 
thoroughbred. She was bought by Mr. Alexander from the fore- 
man on Captain John W. Russell's farm, with the pedigree given 
as above. The name of her breeder w^as not given to Mr. Alex- 
ander, I think, but Bruce has it that her dam, Maria Russell, and 
this mare Sally Russell were both bred by Benjamin Luckett. In 
1863 this mare was offered, with others, to the highest bidder, at 
Mr. Alexander's annual sale, being then thirteen years, old ac- 
cording to the records of the establishment, and the auctioneer 
was not able to coax a bid of ten dollars on her and she Avas led 
out unsold. Five years later — 1868 — I attended the Woodburn 
sale, and a little scrubby-looking old mare was brought into the 
ring, represented to have been stinted to imported Australian, 
and when this was announced a subdued whisper went round 
the ring, "She'll never raise another foal." The auctioneer was 
eloquent upon the value of the Australian blood on the Boston 
blood, and the possibilities of the coming foal, but all to no pur- 
pose, as the mare was led out of the ring the second time, with 
no person willing to bid a dollar. I was astonished that such an 
animal should have been put up at auction, for she had all the 
appearance of being twenty-eight instead of eighteen. She died 
that summer, apparently of old age, and I have no shadow of 
doubt that she sank under the weight of years. On two separate 



INVESTIGATIOX OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 4-21 

occasions great crowds of practical horsemen had, in this man- 
ner, prochiimed that Mr. Alexander had been victimized in the 
age of the mare, and fifteen years later I determined to settle the 
question as to whether this judgment Avas right. 

As the supposed age and breeding of Sally Russell has been 
made to turn and rest upon the ownership of her dam, Maria 
Russell, it is important that we should have the antecedent cir- 
cumstances set out in the plainest possible manner. Captain 
John A. Holton and Captain John W. Russell were farmers in 
Kentucky, living a few miles apart, and I think they were both 
river men at one time or another; certainly Russell was in com- 
mand of a snag boat on the Ohio and Mississippi along about 
183G-40. Like many other Kentucky farmers, they both bred a 
few running horses, but not enough, singly, to justify the ex- 
pense of separate training establishments, so they united their 
strings in one stable, sharing the expense and dividing the 
profits, if any, equally. The partnership did not extend to the 
joint ownership of any of the horses, but simply to the losses or 
profits of training and racing, and Major Benjamin Luckett was 
in their employ as trainer. 

Before going to work in earnest on this investigation, I learned 
that Mr. Llewelyn Holton, a son of Captain John A. Holton, 
still resided on the old farm and that he was old enough to know 
all about the origin and history of Maria Russell, as well as the 
other stock belonging to his father at that time. This was very 
encouraging, but I wanted to know whether he was a man who 
could be relied upon to tell the truth. On this point I addressed 
an inquiry to the late Colonel R. P. Pepper, and his reply is as 
follows: "Your letter of the 29th received. I regard L. Holton, 
of this county, as a man of honor, integrity and intelligence, and 
the peer of any gentleman of my acquaintance. In my opinion 
any statement he will make upon any subject, as to his own 
knowledge, will be accepted in this community as readily as that 
of any gentleman in it. He is a man who sometimes gets on 
sprees from intoxicating liquors, but I have never heard of it 
affecting his intelligence, honor or integrity, and, as above 
stated, his word will be accepted in this community at this time 
as soon as the word of any gentleman in this county or commu- 
nity." 

With this very high indorsement I did not hesitate to send a 
commissioner to interview Mr. Holton and get from him the 



422 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

exact facts in the case, without any leading questions and with- 
out any shading of the truth or bias on either side. What this 
commissioner learned will be given further on. 

Let us now turn to the other side and see how Mr. Brodhead 
manages to get Maria Eassell into the ownership of Captain 
John W. Eussell. Under date of April 30, 1883, he wrote to the 
Tiii'f, Field and Farm as follows: 

"A Colonel Shepherd, of the South — New Orleans, I think — gave or sold to 
Captain J. W. Russell and Captain J. A. Holton a Stockholder mare, out of 
Miranda, by Topgallant, etc. Tliisniare was called Miss Shepherd. Theyowned 
and brfd this mare in partnership. Among the produce thus owned were 
Maria Russell by Rattler, Mary Bell by Sea Gull, and Swiss Boy by imported 
Swiss. Captain Russell sold his half of Swiss Boy to Mr. Taylor, son-in-law of 
Ben Luckett, for $750. Maria Russell was owned and run as a partnership 
mare by Holton and Russell, but was trained by Major Ben Luckett." 

Then follows a lot of stuff, without any relevancy whatever, 
going to show that Ben Luckett trained her at three years old, 
but had no connection whatever with the family, all of which is 
known to everybody, and then he again asserts that "in the divi- 
sion of the partnership property, Maria Russell fell to Captain 
Russell." The next dash that Mr. Brodhead makes is for a negro 
seventy-five years old, who had been in the Russell family from 
his birth, named Jesse Dillon. Jesse was no exception to his 
race, or indeed to many of the white race, for whenever any in- 
formation is wanted from them they are always ready to give it, 
as they expect at least one half-dollar, and if they tel] the story 
"'right up to what is wanted" they expect two. Jesse was sharp 
enough to discover just what his interviewers were after, and he 
was ready to supply "the long-felt want." Jesse was able to tell 
just how the mare got her eye knocked out and just how he took 
her to Blackburn's and had her brsd to Boston. In all this, in- 
cluding the loss of the eye and tiie trip to Blackburn's, Jesse 
may have had in his mind Captain Russell's one-eyed mare, Mary 
Churchill, while his interviev.'ers were thinking about Maria 
Russell. It is no uncommon thing for white people as well as 
black, at seventy-five, to get names of forty or fifty years past 
confused. 

This is all of Mr. Brodhead's case so far as what he presents 
has any relevancy to the point at issue, namely, the identity and 
ownership of the mare Maria Russell. The pedigree was not 
made at Woodburn; Mr. Alexander in this case as in many others 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 423 

was simply the victim of the sharper. The only shadow of evi- 
dence that has been presented that the pedigree might be true is 
the evidence of a superannuated negro, Jesse Dillon. For the 
Woodburn side of the case the reader is referred to Wallace's 
Monthly for June, 1883, page 3G6. In replying to this case I will 
try to summarize the different considerations as briefly as possi- 
ble. 

First. The case is opened with the assumption that Colonel 
Shepherd presented the mare Miss Shepherd, by Stockholder, to 
Captain J. W. Russell and Captain J. A. Holton. We might 
laugh at this by asking which half he gave to Russell and which 
half to Holton? This is merely constructing a' theory by which 
the ownership of Russell might be maintained. It is safe to say 
the mare was given to Holton and to Holton alone, and here is 
the proof of it. There is a silver cup, now in possession of Mr. 
Bowen, grandson of J. A. Holton, with this inscription: "J. A. 
Holton, awarded by Franklyn Agricultural Society, 1836, for 
filly Maria Russell." Where is Captain J. W. Russell's owner- 
ship at that date? 

Second. When S. D. Bruce was compiling his Stud Book, CajD- 
tain John W. Russell had his thoroughbred stock entered there. 
There were several brood mares with their produce under them, 
but where were Maria Russell and her daughter Sally Russell? 
They appear as the property of Ben Luckett, when everybody 
knows he had nothing to do with them. As Captain Russell did 
not have them entered when he was entering his other stock, I 
must take it as prima facie evidence that he did not own them 
at that time. 

Third. It is now in imperishable evidence that John W. Rus- 
sell did not own Maria Russell in 1836, and that he did not own 
her at the time Bruce was compiling his Stud Book, and now 
the question is, was there ever a time when he did own her? To 
answer this question we must turn to Llewellyn Holton, the only 
man then living who knew and had a right to know all about 
the history of this mare. His statement is as follows: 

"Forks of Elkhorn. May 24, 1883. 
" This is to certify tliat my father, Captain John A. Holton, was, for a number 
of years, interested with Captain John W. Russell in a number of thorough- 
breds, and they raced them in partnership. When they dissolved and divided 
the stock, I am positively certain that my father retained all the descendants 
of the Stockholder mare — among them Maria Russell, and all her produce — 



424 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and I know to my certain knowledge tliat Captain Russell never owned or bad 
in bis possession tbe inare Maria Russell, or any of ber produce ; and I furtber 
know to my certain knowledge tbat said mare, Maria Russell; bad two good 
eyes from tbe time of ber foaling until tbe day of ber deatb. It' my fatber 
bred a mare to Boston in 1848, I incline to tbe opinion tbat it was a bay mare 
called Limber, for tbe reason tbat sbe, Limber, was very uncertain, baving 
missed several seasons. Tbere is one point, bowever, tbat I feel very certain 
upon, and tbat is tbat neitber my fatber nor Captain Russell, during tbeir rac- 
ing or breeding career, ever owned a Boston filly. As Boston was tbe most 
famous borse of bis time, it is not at all possible tbat tLiere could bave been a 
Boston colt or filly on my fatber's farm and I not knowing of tbe fact. I was 
born in tbe old bomestead tbe 15tb of November, 1830, and bave resided eitber 
tbere or adjoining all my life; tberefore I bad constant opportunity to know 
all about my fatber's stock of borses. L. Holton. 

" I bereby attest tbat tbe above is my fatber's signature. — J. A. Holton, son 
of Llewellyn Holton." 

Fourth. With the foregoing clear and decisive statement before 
us, it is not necessary to determine whether the partnership be- 
tween Holton and Russell embraced the joint ownership of the 
racing stock or whether the running colts of the two farms were 
brought together from year to year, and as a matter of economy 
and profit, trained and raced as one stable. This latter view of 
the question seems to be made plain. In his interview with Mr. 
Holton my commissioner reported as follows: "The horses were 
always trained by Captain Holton at his private track at the 
Forks of Elkhorn. That he, Llewellyn Holton, always went 
after the colts that were on the Eussell farm when the training 
season commenced, and at the close of the racing campaign of 
the year he always took those back that came from the Russell 
stock, while those from Captain Helton's stock were kept 07i the 
home farm. When the partnership between Captain Holton 
and Captain Russell was dissolved, Mr. Llewellyn Holton is posi- 
tively certain that Captain Russell retained his own stock and 
Captain Holton his own, the latter consisting of the produce of 
the Stockholder mare, among them Maria Russell, and all her 
produce. And he is still more positively certain that neither the 
mare, Maria Russell, nor any of her produce was ever in the 
hands of Captain Russell." At the close of each season the 
owners, respectively, took their own stock home till the next 
spring, and after a series of years each owner took his own stock 
home, and that was the end of the arrangement. 

Fifth. In the summer of 1883 I met Mr. John W. Russell, 
son of Captain Russell, at the house of Mr. R. S. Veech, near 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 425 

Louisville, Kentucky, and we had some conversation on the 
question of the pedigree of Sally Eussell, which had then been in 
hot controversy for some months. The subject was not a pleas- 
ant one to him and he either parried or negatived the few ques- 
tions I asked. A year or two after this I met him at the Gait 
House in Louisville, and we had a very pleasant conversation. 
The controversy about Sally Russell had then subsided, and I 
asked him if be remembered his father's thoroughbred mare 
Mary Churchill. "Oh, yes," he said, ''she was the first horse I 
ever rode, and my folks were very much afraid I would fall oft" 
and get hurt." I then asked him if Mary Churchill was blind of 
one eye, and he answered he '"'could not remember." My next 
question was, whether he recollected anything about Maria Eus- 
sell, and his reply was: "Nothing that is definite." Then fol- 
lowed the inquiry, "whether there were any traditions in the 
household going to show that his father ever owned Maria Rus- 
sell," and he replied: "There are no traditions that are reliable." 
These replies were a most grateful surprise to me, and if I have 
not given the precise words used I certainly have given the pre- 
cise meaning. 

Sixth. Llewellyn Holton was sixty-three years old in 1883 and 
he was afflicted with physical paralysis, but his mind seems to 
have been perfectly sound and memor}- good for a man of his age. 
Before he had the slightest intimation that a pedigree was being 
investigated that might call him into controversy, he was asked 
about Maria Russell by one of the most j)rominent and distin- 
guished of all the breeders of Kentucky, and that breeder wrote 
me as follows: 

"I Lave seen Mr. L. Holton, the son of Captain JoLn A. Holton, of this 
county, and be says liis father bred and owned Maria Russell; that sbe was 
by Rattler, and out of a mare by Stockholder, and was foaled 1834. He says 
he thinks a man by the name of William Duvall can give some information 
about these mares. I will see him to-morrow, and write you." 

As this information about Maria Russell was elicited from Mr. 
Holton on the spur of the moment, and as he gave her pedigree 
correctly, and not only this, but gave the year in which she was 
foaled correctly, his memory, at least so far as this mare is con- 
cerned seems to hav3 been remarkably good. 

Seventh. My correspondent wrote a few days later: "I have 
just learned from William Duvall, who trained for Captain J. A. 



426 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

Holton in 1842, that he remembers the mare Maria Russell, and 
he thinks she was by Seagull, and out of Limber, by Whipster; 
he also remembers a mare owned by Holton that was by Rattler, 
but cannot remember any more about her." This confirms Mr. 
Holton's recollections in a very striking and satisfactory manner. 
As a trainer Mr. Duvall did not handle the brood mares, but 
only their produce. He recalled a Seagull mare and a Rattler 
mare, that Captain Holton owned, but he attached the name 
'•Maria Russell" to the wrong one. This kind of impromptu 
inaccuracy is almost always an element of strength, for it goes to 
prove that the witness has not been "coached." He remembered 
there was a mare by Rattler in the field, and as there was no 
other Rattler mare owned by either Holton or Russell, the iden- 
tity of Maria Russell is clearly established as the property of 
Captain Holton in 1842. 

Eiglitli. With the high indorsement of Mr. Llewellyn Holton 
as a man of truth and honor, given on page 421 of this chapter; 
and with the evidence before me of his clear and unclouded 
memory in giving correctly not only the pedigrees but the year 
in which Maria Russell was foaled, and all this before there was 
any pressure or suspicion on his part as to where his disclosure 
might lead, I cannot, as an honest man, fail to believe that he 
told the truth. Thus, after leaving out all the minor evidences, 
we have the three major points fully and clearly established, 
namely, (1) the inscription on the silver cnp that Captain Hol- 
ton owned her in 183G; (2) the evidence of William Duvall that 
he owned her in 1842; and (3) the statement of Llewellyn Holton 
that he owned her always and that she died his. 

Ninth. At the Woodburn sale of 18G3 and 1868 there were cer- 
tainly at least two hundred experienced horsemen and breeders 
present who were able to discriminate concerning a mare repre- 
sented to be thirteen years old when she looked ten years more; 
or concerning a mare represented to be eighteen years old when 
she looked as if she were twenty-eight. Hence, no man was 
willing to bid five dollars on her. This I take it, was the per- 
sonal judgment of every man who thought anything about it, 
and when she died a few weeks after the last sale, nobody could 
doubt that she died of old age, and nobody could doubt that Mr. 
Alexander represented her to the public just as she had been 
represented to him, both in age and breeding, by the rogue who 
victimized liim. 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 427 

The mare Sally Russell, the grandam of Maud S., had been 
sold to Mr. Alexander by the foreman of Captain Russell's farm, 
and it does not appear that he represented her as having been 
bred by Captain Russell. Indeed, it was not claimed at Wood- 
burn that Captain Russell bred her until a representative of that 
establishment called at my office to examine the service books of 
Boston and there found that "John Russell's one-eyed mare" 
had been bred in 1849. If a fraud, therefore, was established 
the Russell family must bear the odium. Hence all evidence 
from that source must be considered in the light of the fact that 
every member of the family is deeply interested. But notwith- 
standing the efforts of the Russell family to preserve the father's 
name from obloquy, and notwithstanding the trip in search of 
some superannuated darkey who could remember anything and 
everything in consideration of the pour-hoire that would be forth- 
coming, there stood that terrible statement of Llewellyn Holton 
that could not be met by evidence. The whole matter was 
against him, and Mr. Brodhead was not happy. He knew he 
could not prove him wrong, and the only course left open was 
to get him to take back certain things that he had said on the 
ground that his memory had failed and that the fight was be- 
tween "Old Kaintuck" and outside parties who had no business 
to interfere with Kentucky affairs. On an appointed day, there- 
fore, all who were supposed to have any influence with Mr. Hol- 
ton, in the whole countryside, met Mr. Brodhead, and they came 
down on "the poor old paralytic" hammer and tongs. They 
asked him what he remembered about all the horses, each in his 
turn, in the whole neighborhood, whether he had ever heard of 
them before or not. This was kept up a long time, but they 
could not prevail on him to take back a single specific statement 
he had made. He had said Captain Russell had never owned 
Maria Russell or any of her produce, and he would not take it 
back. He had said Maria Russell had two good eyes when she died, 
and he would not take it back. At last when the poor old in- 
valid was worn out they sprung the patriotic dodge of "Kentucky 
against the world" upon him and this had some effect, but not 
enough to save the anxious "bulldozers" from a feeling of great 
depression. At last Mr. Brodhead seized a pen and indited a 
letter for him to sign, addressed to me, with the request that I 
would publish it. I am not able to say how many attempts were 
made to get such a letter as he would be willing to sign, but 



428 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

several different drafts were made, and sick and worried, and in- 
order to get rid of his tormentors, he signed, and the letter came 
to me, and I published it as follows: 

"Forks op Elkhorn, June 12, 1883. 
"Mr. J. H. Wallace. 

" Dear Sir : In answer to your letter to my son, of May 21, 1883, there are 
three points suggested. First, in regard to her produce (Maria Russell's). I 
have no recollection any further. I have no data from which I could find out 
concerning them. Second, I have no remembrance of her death nor the man- 
ner of it. Now, in regard to the statement I made to Mr. John K. Stringfield. 
I think he has made it too strong, for 1 told him my statement was from mem- 
ory only, and that I could not nor would not swear to it. Since that time I 
have had sufficient proof to overbalance my memory, and circumstances called 
to mind that have convinced me I was in error, I simply stated what I 
believed to be true at that time. I have no interest in the matter whatever — 
only want to be understood. I trust that you will oblige me by publishing the 
above letter. Yours truly, 

"L. HOLTON." 

It must have been a most pitiful sight to see six. or eight able- 
bodied men, headed by the stalwart Brodhead, acting as chief 
inquisitor, circling round the reclining form of a poor old invalid, 
trying to convince him that he had no memory and that he was 
a liar, prodding him with questions about horses that he never 
had heard of, and when he failed to tell them, torturing him with 
remarks that if he couldn't answer that question how could he 
know so well about Maria Eussell? But with all their tortures 
they couldn't force him to say bis father did not own Maria Eussell 
all her life and that she did not die with two good eyes. It was 
simply a little Spanish Inquisition on the waters of the Elkhorn 
from which came the cry, "Eecant, Eecant," dinged into the 
ears of the helpless paralytic. Still, helpless as he was against 
so many, he obeyed his conscience and maintained his integrity, 
notwithstanding all the satanic arts of Torquemada. When all 
else had failed the war-cry was shouted in his ear: "New York is. 
trying to destroy the breeding interests of Kentucky, and all true 
Kentuckians must stand by each other or we all go under." 
The old man brightened up and said: "I'm a Kentuckian, but 
you mustn't try to make me a self-convicted liar." The piece of 
patchwork given above, in the shape of a letter, was then 
shaped up by his tormentors, for the old man was not able to 
write a line, and dispatched to the office of Wallace's Monthly, 
where it was printed just as it was received. Each one of the 



Ix^VESTIGATlON OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 429 

tormentors made a copy of it, and no one of them was satisfied 
with it; even the inquisitoi:-general said it fell far short of what 
they wanted, but that by industriously speaking of it as a re- 
cantation, the public would soon come to treat it as a recantation. 
When, after years of fruitless effort, Mr. Brodhead, manager 
at Woodburn Farm, got control of registration, he made an early 
move to have the cloud removed from the pedigree of the stal- 
lion Lord Eussell, and brought the matter before the neocracy of 
his own creation, of which he was himself the head and brains, 
and the action thereon was published in Wallace's Monilily for 
February, 1893. The presentation is imposing in length and 
abounds in many things that have no possible bearing on the 
question at issue. Unfortunately I have no means of determin- 
ing the extent to which the crime of the interpolation or excision 
has been made manifest except in two of the exhibits which I 
will give. In Exhibit 1 (Holton's letter above) the following 
words are interpolated: "and in justice to all I correct my state- 
ment." These words are not very important to the meaning, 
but they are very important as indicating the accuracy, and hence 
reliability, of a witness. In the same exhibit Mr. Brodhead says: 
"I insist that you will oblige me/' etc., while the original uses 
the word "trust" instead of "insist." Again, Mr. Brodhead has 
his letter dated June 11, 1893, instead of June 12, 1883, as it is 
in the original. The variation of the dates here seems to have 
had a purpose, whatever it may have been. This letter must 
have been a great trouble, for I liave seen three or four copies 
of it, so called, and no two of them alike. 

I was duly notified that the question of Sally Eussell's pedigree 
would be brought up at that meeting, and requested to be there, 
to sustain my view of that question. The court and the jury 
were made up of Brodhead's creatures, and organized simply to 
register his edicts. The wise man said, "Surely in vain the net 
is spread in the sight of any bird." The bird looked on, from a 
safe distance, and saw the fowler impaled in his own snare, by his 
own act, and his true character revealed to the Avorld. It is very 
difficult to understand just why it should have been deemed 
necessary to cut out the very pith and heart of Mr. Holton's 
letter, Avhen he knew that it Avould make no difference Avith his 
court whether there was any evidence at all. Under the law of 
retribution, a man's character may be determined by his own 
acts. 



430 



THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



HOLTON'S TRUE STATEMENT. 
" Forks of Elkiioiin, May 24, 1883. 
"This is to certify that my father, 
Captain John A. Holton, was for a 
number of years interested with Cap- 
tain John Russell in a number of 
thoroughbreds, and they raced them 
in partnership. When they dissolved 
and divided the stock, I am positively 
certain that my father retained all the 
descendants of the Stockholder mare 
— among thein Maria Russell and all 
of her produce AND I KNOW 
TO MY CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE 
THAT CAPTAIN RUSSELL NEVER 
OWNED OR HAD IN HIS POS- 
SESSION THE MARE MARIA 
RUSSELL, OR ANY OF HER PRO- 
DUCE. And I further know to my 
certain knowledge that said mare, 
Maria Russell, had two good eyes 
from the time of her foaling until 
the day of her death. If my father 
bred a mare to Boston in 1848, I incline 
to the opinion that it was a bay mare 
we owned called Limber, for the rea- 
son that she. Limber, was very uncer- 
tain, having missed several seasons. 
There is one point, however, that I 
feel very certain upon, and that is, 
that neither my father nor Captain 
Russell, during their racing or breed- 
ing career, evt-r owned a Boston filly. 
As Boston was the most famous horse 
of his time, it is not at all possible 
that there could have been a Boston 
colt or filly on my father's farm and I 
not knowing of the fact. I was born 
in the old homestead the 15th of No- 
vember, 1820, and have resided either 
there or adjoining all my life ; there- 
fore I had constant opportunity to 
know all about my father's stock of 
horses. L. Holton. 

" I hereby attest that tlie above is my 
father's signature. — J. A. Holton, son 
of Llewellyn Holton." 



BRODHEAD'S REPRESENTATION 

OF IT. 

"Forks, Elkhorn, May 24, 1883. 

"This is to certify that my father. 
Captain John A. Holton, was for a num- 
ber of years interested with Captain 
John Russell in a number of thorough- 
breds, and they raced them in partner- 
ship. When they dissolved, and divided 
the stock, I am positively certain that 
my father retained all the descendants 
of the Stockholder mare, among them 
Maria Russell and all her produce, and 
I know to my certain knowledge that 
said Maria Russell had two good eyes 
from the time of her foaling until the 
day of her death. If my father bred a 
mare to Boston in 1848, I incline to the 
opinion that it was a bay mare he 
owned called Limber, for the reason 
that she. Limber, was very uncertain, 
having missed several seasons. There 
is one point, however, that I feel very 
certain upon, and that is that neither 
my father nor Captain Russell during 
their racing or breeding career ever 
owned a Boston filly. As Boston was 
the most famous horse of his time, it 
is not at all possible that there could 
haye been a Boston colt or filly on my 
father's farm and I not knowing of the 
fact. I was born in the old homestead 
the 15th of November, 1820, and have 
resided either there or adjoining all my 
life ; therefore I had constant oppor- 
tunity to know all about my father's 
stoclc of horses. L. Holton. 

"I hereby attest that the above is my 
father's signature. — J, A. HOLTON, 
son of L. Holton." 



INVESTIGATIOlSr OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 431 

The deadly parallel columns tell the whole story. The central 
and most important fact in Mr. Holton's statement has been de- 
liberately and carefully cut out by Mr. Brodhead, and the evi- 
dence that he did so cannot be wiped out either by money or by 
the torture of invalids. The testimony of cold type remains for- 
ever. Has Mr. Brodhead, it is asked, professed to have given 
the whole of Mr. Holton's statement, and suppressed a vital part 
of it? He has given every word and letter of the statement, 
from the date line to the signature, except the one sentence that 
is the life and soul of the whole statement, and that sentence I 
have printed above in capital letters, so that it may be easily dis- 
tinguished and compared. For years I have known that Mr. 
Brodhead possessed most remarkable visual powers. When he 
wanted to see a thing he could see it through a stone wall and 
without any assistance from the ''X-rays," and when he didn't 
watit to see a thing he couldn't see it even when held up to his 
very nose under an arc light. The deception practiced here 
might justly be designated by a harder name, for it Avas deliber- 
ately planned and carried out in order to gain an end by suppress- 
ing the truth. AVhy did he not free himself from his marvelous 
powers of vision, and looking out of the natural eyes of his mind, 
see the imminent danger of a terrible exposure? In keeping back 
part of the truth with the pretension that he had given it all, 
how could he avoid recalling the fate of Annanias and Sappljira 
for keeping back part of the price with the pretension that they 
had given it all? 

As an exercise in ethical athletics I will submit the following 
abstract question to the debating clubs, especially in Kentucky, 
viz., "Is the man who suppresses the truth in order to sustain a 
fraudulent pedigree any more worthy of belief than the man who 
made the pedigree and sold the horse u]3on it?" 



CHAPTER XXX. 

INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. — [Continued.) 

How Belle of Wabash got her pedigree — Specimen of pedigree making in 
that day and locality — Search for the dam of Thomas Jefferson — True 
origin and history of Belle of Wabash — Facts about the old-time gelding 
Prince — The truth about Waxy, the grandam of Sunol — Remarkable at- 
tempts to make a pedigree out of nothing — How "Jim" Eoff worked a 
"tenderfoot" — Pedigree of American Eclipse — Pedigree of Boston — Tom 
Bowling and Aaron Pennington — Chenery's Gray Eagle — Pedigree of 
George W^ilkes in doubt. 

At Louisville, Kentucky, October, 1860, a ten-mile race was 
trotted which excited a good deal of local interest and commento 
The contestants in this race were entered as follows: 

"Captain Magowan. by imp. Sovereign, dam by American Eclipse." 

"Gip.'^y Queen, by Wagner, dam by imp. Glencoe." 

"Belle of Wabash (Indiana Belle), by Bassinger, dam by imp. William." 

The names of the j)arties making the entries are given in the 
entries of the first and second, and the Louisville Journal of the 
week before remarks that "J. J. Alexander will represent his 
State honorably with the Belle of Lidiana." Captain Magowan 
held the lead from start to finish, and at the end of the eighth 
mile, some say the seventh. Belle of Wabash was drawn. It will 
be observed that, so far as given, each one of these animals was 
furnished with a first-class race-horse pedigree; for it Avas then 
held as firmly as any religious tenet that no horse could go that 
distance at any gait unless he was strictly thoroughbred, and, in 
Kentucky, if he did not have such a pedigree they gave him one 
on the spot. At that time they never bothered their heads hunt- 
ing up the breeder of an animal to learn how it was bred. They 
simply wanted to see the performance and then make the pedi- 
gree to suit it. These three pedigrees were all bogus in all their 
elements, and I knew so little of the ways of the horse world, at 
that time, that I accepted and recorded them as genuine. 



INVESTIGATIO:Nr OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 433 

Captain Magowan was a roan gelding, willful and bad tem- 
pered, and all that seems to be known about his origin is the con- 
ceded fact that he was bred in Kentucky and that he was proba- 
bly descended from the tribe of Copperbottoms, or possibly the 
Tom Hals. The roan color prevailed in both tribes and the 
horse himself looked like the Copperbottoms. 

Gipsy Queen, at the time of the above race in 1860, was 
owned by a "sporting man" named George Bidwell, of Chicago, 
or at least she raced under his direction. About the time of this 
race, Mr. Thomas J. Vail bought the mare and took her to 
Hartford, Connecticut. He bred her to Toronto Chief and she 
produced a black colt. The mare and colt afterward passed into 
the hands of Mr. William B. Smith, and this colt grew up to be 
the famous Thomas Jefferson— "The Whirlwind of the East." 
In connection with Mr. Smith I devoted a good deal of labor to a 
futile search for the origin and pedigree of this mare, and the re- 
sult of our search amounted to nothing more than a reasonable 
probability that she was bred at Rochester, New York; was got 
by a son or grandson of Vermont Black Hawk and was taken 
from there to Chicago. This latter point of the transfer to 
Chicago seemed to be quite circumstantially fixed in Mr. Smith's 
mind. 

Mr. Allen W. Thomson, of Woodstock, Vermont — a man of 
great industry and a lover of the truth for the truth's sake — also 
made an exhaustive search, and from a recent contribution to the 
press he evidently thinks he has found it, and possibly he has; 
but while I generally agree with Mr. Thomson's conclusions, and 
prize them as honest and carefully reached, I am forced to dis- 
sent in this case. Without going into details, he brings the 
mare from Williamstown, Vermont, and takes her to Woodstock, 
Illinois, where she is paired with another black mare, and after 
passing through two or three hands tliey at last land in a public 
livery stable in Chicago, and there the identity of the supposi- 
tious Gipsy Queen is lost, and so far as known she never came 
out of that stable. One or two years afterward a black mare 
from Chicago, in possession of George Bidwell, appeared in some 
jjublic races, notably the one given above, and the conclusion ij 
at once reached that this black mare, Gipsy Queen, was the 
black filly brought from Williamstown, Vermont. To this all 
the intermediate owners between Williamstown and Behrens' 
livery stable were ready to insist that this black mare was the 



434 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

Williamstown filly, but not one of them had ever seen the mare 
that George Bidwell was handling, and some of them evidently 
were not worthy of belief if they had seen her. There is the 
''missing link" between Behrens' stable and George Bidwell, that 
has not been supplied and probably never can be supplied. The 
chances that the Williamstown filly was the real Gipsy Queen, 
all things considered, seem to stand as about one to a thousand. 
AVe must, therefore, conclude that we have no satisfactory in- 
formation as to how or where this mare was bred. 

Belle of Wabash. — My first inquiry about this mare was 
made more than twenty-five years ago, and I did not then suppose 
that her pedigree would ever become a question of any general 
interest. In the first volume of the Eegister I had entered her 
as a black mare, foaled 1852, got by Bassinger, son of Lieutenant 
Bassinger, and dam said to be by imported William IV. She was 
then owned by George C. Stevens of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
After her son — The Moor — proved himself a great sire of trot- 
ters in getting Beautiful Bells, Sultan and other good ones, her 
pedigree became a question of very great imjjortance. As the 
search for it would occupy more space, in detail, than I can give 
to it in these pages, I will here give the references in Wallace's 
Monthly, where the principal correspondence may be found: Vol. 
XIV., p. 510; XV., p. 441; XVI., p. 43; and for a complete un- 
derstanding of the matter the references here given should be 
carefully examined. 

Mr. S. D. Puett, of Indiana, was the first to give me a starting 
point in the investigation of the pedigree of this mare. In all 
tliat had been said about her I never was able to find a man who 
really knew anything about her origin, until Mr. Puett gave me 
the address of Cyrus Romaine, who had owned her when very 
young and handled her for speed. He says "she was sired by a 
colt from her own dam, tliat was got by a Copperbottom stal- 
lion from Kentucky." He was not able to give any information 
about the sire of the dam, and as to the gait of the dam he says: 
''Her dam was a natural pacer. I cannot say as to her sire, as he 
was unbroken at the time." He bought the mare at three years 
old. liandled her one year and sold her to Mr. J. J. Alexander, 
of Montezuma, of the same county (Parke), in 1856. Mr. Alex- 
ander still owned her in 1860 when she trotted in Louisville, and 
after his death Williams, his trainer, married his widow and still 
controlled the mare. Mr. Romaine failed to give the name of 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 435. 

the breeder of the mare, which will be explained further on. 
Soon after he wrote, April 26, 1880, he removed to Nebraska 
and I have not heard from him since. In 1857 she was trained 
for Mr. Alexander by John Williams on Stroue's track at Kock- 
ville, Indiana, the county seat of Parke County. In 1860 she 
was entered by Williams in several races at Indianapolis and at 
other points, and made a record of 2:40. About 1865, or perhaps 
a year or two earlier, she became the property of George C. 
Stevens. In his catalogue for 1868 she is entered merely as "Old 
Belle," and he knew nothing of her origin or history till I gave 
it to him, along with the humbug pedigree that I had copied 
from the entries at the Louisville ten-mile race. 

Through the kindness of Mr. Puett I received the following 
letter from Mr. Henry C. Brown, a very reputable business man 
and a grain dealer in Kockville, Parke County, Indiana. This 
letter from Mr. Browu has in it such evidence of candor and in- 
telligence that I will here insert it entire: 

" Dear Sir : In reply to your inquiry of tlie 23d ult., as to what I know of 
tlje 'origin and history of tlie mare called Belle of Wabash,' I will give you 
the following facts : 

" In the year 1855, or '56, I am not positive which, this mare, when a three- 
year-old, was purchased by Cyrus Romaine, then a resident of this county, of 
an old farmer in Clay County, this State, paying $85 for her. This farmer 
lived at that time about a mile and a half north of Brazil, the present county- 
seat of Clay County. 

" As to this farmer's name, neither myself nor Romaine can tell. He was 
an old man at that time, and undoubtedly has gone to his reward long ago. 
Neither do we know miyt/dng at all about the pedigree of the mare. 

" There is no person living, so far as I or Romaine know, that can tell any- 
thing about her ancestors, and in my opinion it would be impossible, at this 
late day, to find any one in Clay County that could give us any information in 
regard to her. 

" The country around Brazil at that time was almost a wilderness; now the 
city is spread out, and covers, no doubt, the farm where the mare was foaied. 
Clay County is now the center of the Indiana coal-fis-lds, and, of course, the 
entire face of the country about there is changed wonderfully since 1856; con- 
sequently it would be almost if not quite impossible to find the exact location. 

" After keeping the mare eight or nine months, Romaine sold her to John 
Alexander, of Montezuma, this county, for $160. Alexander soon after com- 
menced training her, and in about one year I think he, or his trainer, John 
Williams, took her to Kentucky, and entered her there in some kind of races, 
fciince then you know her history much better than I do. 

" At the time Romaine bought the mare he and I were trading in stock to- 
gether, boarding at the same house and sleeping in the same bed. I mention, 
this onlv that you may understand that I know what I am writing about. 



436 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

" I am truly sorry that I cannot give you tbe true pedigree of the mare, but 
it cannot be done. TLere is no man liere or anyvvbere else tbat can tell you 
anytbing more tban I bave stated berein. 

"You will nn doubt tbink tbat tbere is considerable of superfluous matter 
in tbis letter, but I do not see bow I could tell you wbat I wanted to in fewer 
words. 

" Everytbing stated berein is truth, and, if necessary, 1 am willing to make 
affidavit to tbe same at any time. Very truly yours, 

"Henry C. Brown." 

Mr. Eomaino's representation amounted to nothing definite or 
satisfactory about the pedigree of Belle of Wabash, because he 
failed to give the name and location of her breeder, but Mr. 
Brown's letter clears this all up on the grounds that Mr. Komaine 
Teally did not know the breeder's name. Whatever her sire and 
whatever her dam, we may feel sure they were not trotting-bred, 
although she was a trotter. We are left, therefore, to conclude 
that, as in a thousand other cases, this mare was a pacing-bred 
trotter. The one point that is vital is settled by Mr. Brown, as 
he was with Mr. Romaine when he bought the mare and knew 
all about the transaction. He cannot remember the breeder's 
name, but he locates him as "living a mile and a half north of 
Brazil," and that it is now all cut up into residence and mining 
lots. This seems to fix the location of the breeder beyond all 
doubt. This old man seems to have been a pioneer in a very 
poor county and still a comparative wilderness when this transac- 
tion took place. At that time the coal fields had not been 
touched, and it is wholly beyond belief that he took his unknown 
old mare out of his own county, across the adjoining county of 
Parke and into Vermilion County, wherever in it Mr. Weisiger 
lived, to have her bred to his part-bred stallion Bassinger. And 
then when he came to sell the foal at three years old for $85, 
when horses were high, can we believe he would do so with- 
out ever mentioning how the filly was bred? The chain of 
ownership is complete, as she passed from her unnamed breeder 
to Mr. Eomaine, from him to Mr. Alexander, in whose hands 
she did her trotting, and then to Mr. Williams, and there is no 
place for the Louisville humbug pedigree to come in. She got 
her bogus pedigree at the same time and in the same way that 
Magowan and Gipsy Queen got theirs, and there was not a single 
shadow of truth in any one of them. The tenacity with which 
some people hold on to a "thoroughbred" origin for their trot- 
ters when the evidence is all against them has long been a mys- 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 437' 

tery to honest folks, who are able to look at things as they are; 
but it is not difficult to understand the phenomenon when we 
analyze the reasons for it. First, the owner is anxious to hold 
on to all he can possibly claim in the way of ai'istocratic descent 
with the hope that it may help his sales; and second, there are 
always a few "featherheads " with golden pockets ready to buy 
that kind of stuif, because they have never gone far enough in 
horse history to be able to kick themselves loose from the swad- 
dling clothes of their infantile prejudices. 

Pkhstce. — The chestnut gelding Prince was one of the great 
trotters in the early "fifties." He was pitted against Hero, the 
pacing son of Harris' Hambletonian, Lantern and others. As 
usual at that time he was given a thoroughbred pedigree, which 
I was then led to accept, without really knowing anything about 
his origin. He was represented to have been bred in Kentucky, 
and owned by R. Ten Broeck of that State. Then would natu- 
rally follow a thoroughbred pedigree coming from that State, and 
nobody doubted it for a long time. He was represented to be by 
Woodpecker, son of Bertrand; dam by imported Sarpedon; 
grandam said to be thoroughbred. When he started in his ten- 
mile race against Hero, William T. Porter said he was by Wood- 
pecker, and out of that grew the pedigree above. In the old 
Spirit of the Times, of October 11, 1856, there is a short com- 
munication signed "Hiram," in which is the only circumstantial 
account of the origin of Prince that I have ever seen. It is im- 
plied by the writer that he was bred by a Mr. Dey, of Chautauqua 
County, New York, for he says he was got by "an old chestnut 
horse called Duroc, from Long Island," and came of the Dey 
Mare. It seems that Dey sold the colt to a young man named 
Worden, and he was first known as "the Worden colt." He was 
then sold to Manley Griswold, and from Griswold to Daniel Van- 
vliet, who sold him in Buffalo to Bennett & Jones {or Thomas), 
for one thousand dollars, and they sold him to William AVhelan, 
of Long Island, for fifteen hundred dollars. "Hiram" carries 
the history of the horse no further, as he had then placed 
him in the hands of the great artists of the trotting world. 
Of his sire, "Old Duroc," he says he was taken from Long Island 
to Villenova, in Chautauqua (^^ounty, by a merchant of that 
place, named George Hopkins, and after getting about twenty 
colts he died. Among these twenty we find Prince and another 
afterward known as the Walker Horse, which achieved a high local 



438 THE HORSE OF AMEEICA. 

reputation as a sire of trotters and I have frequently met with his 
cross in the pedigrees of good animals. This showing is not abso- 
lutely complete, but it is infinitely better than any other that 
has ever been given to the public. 

Waxy, the grandam of Sunol. When the two-year-old filly 
Sunol in 1888 came out and trotted a mile in 2:18, it fairly took 
one's breath away, and the first question on every tongue was, 
"How is she bred?" She was represented to be by Electioneer, 
out of Waxanaby General Benton, and she out of Waxy by Lexing- 
ton, and "thoroughbred." When asked who bred her and how it 
was known that Waxy was by Lexington,^ the answer came back 
that the breeder was not known — that she had been taken across 
the plains by a man who died on the way. The search then 
commenced for the breeder of Waxy and the identification of her 
dam. As the search progressed there were some very curious 
things developed. When it started in the spring it was a year- 
ling stallion colt, and when it reached California, in the fall, it 
was a two-year-old filly. More than this, it was shown by in- 
dubitable proofs, such as they were, that she had two dams, and 
then shown that she had no dam at all. With such a Kentucky 
muddle on hand there was an excellent opportunity for a con- 
troversy that might possibly become somewhat heated. This con- 
troversy is famous in the history of the exposures of untruthful 
pedigrees, and I will give a brief outline of it, with some speci- 
mens of the evidence adduced to sustain it. 

Early in the spring of 1864 Mr. John P. Welch, an intelligent 
man, trained to the profession of civil engineer, reached the blue 
grass region of Kentucky for the purpose of securing and taking 
across the plains a band of well-bred horses to California. In 
this venture he was backed by Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy gen- 
tleman of the latter State. Mr. Welch was successful in i^erfect- 
ing his arrangements, and when on the very eve of starting he 
sent forward a complete inventory of all the animals he had in 
his baud and sent this inventory to the California Spirit of the 
limes, in which paper it was published May 14, 1864, and is as 
follows: 

1. Bay mare, 6 years old, by imp. Sovereign, dam by Glencoe, g.d. Ann 
Merry. 

2. Bay filly, 3 years, by Vandal, dam Miss Singleton by Old Denmark, g.d. 
Bellamira by Monarch. 

3. Bay filly, 2 years old, by Mambrino Chief, dam by Commodore. 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTEP PEDIGREES. 439 

4. Bay horse, 3 years old, by Mambrino Chief, dam by Gray Eaj?le. 

5. Black colt. 2 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam (dam of Capitola) by 
Margrave. 

6. Bay mare, 9 years old, by imp. Glencoe, dam by Rudolpb, g.d. Belle An- 
derson. 

7. Bay filly, 2 years old, by Revenue, dam Sally Morgan by Emancipation. 

8. Chestnut filly, 4 years old, by Vandal, dam by Gray Eagle, g.d. Churchill. 

9. Chestnut mare by Wagner (dam of No. 11). 
1(/. Bay mare by Sovereign. 

11. Black colt; 2 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam No. 9, by Wagner. 

12. Chestnut filly, 3 years old, by Jack Ganjble, dam Betty King by Boston. 

13. Bay mare, 6 years old, by imp. Sovereign, dam by Mirabeau, g.d. Ara- 
bella. 

14. Captain Beard, b.s., 9 years old, by imp. Yorkshire, dam by imp. Glen- 
coe, g.d. by imp. Leviathan, g.g.d. by Stockholder. 

15. Gray mare by Gray Eagle, dam Mary Morris, by Medoc. 

16. Hope, ch. m. by Glencoe, dam Susette by Aratus. 

17. Bay mare by Sovereign, dam by Gray Eagle. 

18. Chestnut filly, 2 years old, by Bob Johnson, dam by Brawner's Eclipse. 

19. Chestnut filly, 3 years old, by Kt. of St. George, dam by Gray Eagle. 

20. Bay colt, one year old, by Lexington, dam by Gray Eagle, g.d. Mary 
Morris. 

21. Ch. c. 2 years old by Ringgold, dam Hope by Glencoe. 
22 and 23. Pair 3:00 six-year-old trotting mares. 

24. Black mare, trotter, 8 years old: time, 2:50. 

25. Bay gelding, trotter, 5 years old; time, near 3;00. 

26. Bay mare for show, but not to go. 

« 
From this inventory we must conclude that Mr. "Welch was a 
careful and methodical man. He knew he had twenty-six animals 
ready to start, and after he had written off the descriptions and 
pedigrees of these twenty-six animals he verified his work by 
numbering them from one to twenty-six inclusive, and then he 
knew he had not omitted any one. This inventory is the basis of 
the whole truth in this matter, and is the only evidence in the 
wide world of what animals Mr. Welch started with to California. 
As this is the vital and only starting point to reach the truth, I 
trust my readers will examine it again carefully and see whether 
it includes any filly or mare by Lexington, of any age. When 
you ask any of these "more-running-blood-in-the-trotter" peo- 
ple who took Waxy, the phantom daughter of Lexington, to 
California, you will get an evasive answer, and when pressed 
they will at last say, John P. Welch. Now, as to John P. 
Welch, "he being dead yet speaketh." From his unknown grave 
he tells these people they are trying to establish what is not true, 



440 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and with his ghostly finger points to the inventory and demands, 
"Where is the Lexington filly in that list? You are trying to 
displace the truth with a falsehood," and he drives this charge 
home to the heart of each one of them. 

Here we might close this case and leave it to the enlightened 
judgment of all intelligent and honest people, for there is not 
a scintilla of evidence that any two-year-old daughter of Lexing- 
ton was taken to California in 18G4. Until this evidence is ad- 
duced, no attempt to overthrow the contents of John P. Welch's 
inventory has a single peg to stand on. But I am not yet done 
with some of the peculiarities that have been developed in this 
case, for long ago I learned in this pedigree business, 

" That for ways that are dark, 
And for tricks that are vain, 
The heathen Chinee is peculiar." 

At this point the case bifurcates, one fork leading to the Grey 
Eagle mare as the dam of W^axy, and the other to the Brawner's 
Eclipse mare, and I think my language will not be wholly un- 
parliamentary when I pronounce them both frauds. Mr. Levi S. 
Gould, a worthy business man of Boston, whom I have always 
esteemed as honest, was the first to dig up this whole matter in 
the columns of the California Spirit of the Times, and the first to 
give the above inventory to the public. He traveled thousands 
of miles and claimed to have traced Waxy to tlie stable of her 
breeder, Philip Swigert, of Frankfort, Kentucky. The full 
account of his laborious trip was published in Wallace's Montldif 
for March, 1889, p. 17. In the inventory he found one animal 
got by Lexington, but this was a bay colt of 1863, and out of the 
Grey Eagle mare, but he wanted a chestnut filly. After study- 
ing the matter over, he concluded that this ''bay colt" was a 
typographical error for "chestnut filly" and that this established 
the pedigree of Waxy. He interviewed a number of people who 
had known of, or had been in some way connected with, the 
Welch venture, and they were all able to confirm his discovery of 
the typographical error, and could recount to a nicety their dis- 
tinct recollections of the sorrel filly by Lexington, out of the 
Grey Eagle mare. These people seemed to possess the most as- 
tonishing memories, and the color, breeding and age of a filly they 
had not seen nor heard of for a quarter of a century all came 
back to them with as much freshness as though the events had 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGKEES. 441 

occurred yesterday. Then there was a peculiar element in their 
memories, for they could recall everything about this one filly 
and nothing about any of the others. At last Mr. Gould reached 
Mr. Brodhead, of Kentucky, where the "finishing touches" were 
put upon the pedigree of Waxy. Mr. Satterwhite did not reach 
Woodburn till after Mr. Gould had left, but that did not prevent 
him from making a "statement" that exactly fitted the theory of 
the pedigree as matured by Mr. Gould and Mr. Brodhead. He 
had been Mr. Philip Swigert's foreman in 1864, and had a right 
to know something of the transfer of some eight or ten head of 
stock from Mr. Swigert to Mr. Welch in the spring of that year. 
Satterwhite was quite too good a Avitness, as he disclosed his 
cramming frightfully. He remembered "the light chestnut filly, 
by Lexington and out of the Grey Eagle mare," with great dis- 
tinctness and was sure she was foaled in 1863. In no single case 
was he certain excej^t in the filly by Lexington, and in no single 
case was he able to give the ages of the other young things cor- 
rectly. After Satterwhite made his visit to Woodburn, Mr. 
Brodhead wrote Mr. Gould as follows: 

" SattervvLite says Dick Jackson was witli Welch. I tliink, with what you 
have, the pedigree of Waxy is conclusively proved, and you can get your arti- 
cle ready. The sooner it is published the better. I forwarded some letters 
to you, and I hope they gave you additional information." 

It will be remembered that Mr. Gould started out on the as- 
sumption that, as there was but one animal in the inventory by 
Lexington and that was a bay colt of 1863, that "colt," he argued, 
was a typographical error, and instead of "bay colt" it should 
read "sorrel filly." On this very uncertain basis he Avorked 
throughout. On this basis he collected all his futile statements. 
On this basis, and to lend a helping hand, Satterwhite testified; 
iind on this basis Brodhead wrote, "With what you have, the 
pedigree of Waxy is conclusively proved." Now that Mr. Brod- 
head is satisfied and that Mr. Bruce promptly entered AVaxy in 
his Stud Book as by Lexington and out of the Grey Eagle mare, 
we must drop the whimsical idea of the "typographical error" 
and consider whether the bay colt of 1863, by Lexington, did 
really become a sorrel filly of 1862 Avhen he reached California a 
fcAv months later. 

1. The bay colt, No. 20, of the inventory, was the only animal 
in the band by Lexington. He was a foal of 1863, and was a year 
younger than any of the others. 



442 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

2. In speaking of the losses, by deatli on the route, of some of 
the more noted animals, Mr. Anderson enumerates the noted 
stallion Caj)tain Beard, and a very fine yearling colt by Lexing- 
ton, called Frank. Here perished the only foal by Lexington in 
the band, and we may as well bury Mr. Gould's and Mr. Brod- 
head's "typographical error" with him, for the colt kicked it to 
death before he died. 

3. When the band reached California there were several addi- 
tions smuggled into it as being part of the originals from Ken- 
tucky, and among these additions was the light chestnut filly that 
has been since known as Waxy, given as a foal of 18G2, and got 
by Lexington, dam unknown. 

4. As Mr. Brodhead had proved conclusively, from the records 
at Woodburn, that Mr. Swigert's Grey Eagle mare was barren in 
1862, the "typographical error" parties found themselves placed 
"between the devil and the deep sea." 

This outside filly that had been smuggled into the band of 
Kentuckians was advertised along with them, as a foal of 1862, 
in the fall of 1864; she was sold as a foal of 1862; she was entered 
in a sweepstake for three-year-olds as a foal of 1862; she was ex- 
hibited at a horse show as a foal of 1862; she started to run the 
only race she ever attempted as a foal of 1862, and proving her- 
self utterly worthless as a race mare, she was given away on the 
spot as a foal of 1862. 

As the only representative of Lexington in the band was "the 
yearling bay colt Frank," as shown by Mr. Anderson, the partner 
of Mr. Welch; and as the records at Woodburn had clearly and 
distinctly shown that Swigert's Grey Eagle mare was barren in 
1862, the bottom was out of the conspiracy and it was abandoned. 
There was a little fussing about the possibility that there might 
have been a mistake and that Waxy might have been a foal of 
1863 after all, but it amounted to nothing more than the en- 
feebled squeak of an asthmatic mouse and then all was quiet. 

Before passing to the other branch of the investigation, this 
seems to be the proper place to speak of the incidents of the sale 
and its sequences at the Fair Grounds at San Jose, January 3, 
1865. There were some twelve or fifteen head, that had been 
previously advertised, offered at public sale, and a number of 
those were sold, all indeed in which this inquiry has any interest. 
AVhen the stock arrived at San Jose, there was a good deal of 
confusion, and it is just possible that some of them were not. 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 443' 

correctly placed. Tlie only discrepancy which I have found be- 
tween Mr. Welch's inventory and the facts is in the color of the 
filly No. 18, that appears in the inventory as a chestnut, but is 
advertised and sold as a bay. This mistake in color is not infre- 
quent in the spring of the year before the old coat is shed, and I 
think it may be reasonably accounted for on this ground. James 
L. Eoff, well known from ocean to ocean as the king of all "hors& 
sharps," seems to have taken a good deal of interest in assorting 
the animals and in, picking up scraps of information from the 
boys who had come with them. At the same time he was an ex- 
cellent judge of racing stock, and as silent as the grave to the vic- 
tims whom he sought to mislead and then beat. In this way he 
soon knew more about the breeding of the animals than those in 
charge of them. Mr. William AVoodward seems to have been his- 
friend (?) with plenty of money, but a perfect "tenderfoot" in 
the mysteries of the race horse. No doubt he pointed out to Mr. 
Woodward the so-called Lexington filly and advised him to buy 
her, assuring him that he wanted her himself, but if he wanted 
to take a little fly in racing he would not bid against him. The 
sale came oif, and Eoif ran up the Eevenue filly, out of Sally 
Morgan, to three hundred and twenty-five dollars and got her, it 
is said, for Theodore Winters. When they came to the filly by 
Bob Johnson, out of the mare by Brawner's Eclijise, Eotf bought 
her at two hundred and fifty dollars for himself, and named 
her Lilly Hitchcock. The next animal sold was the filly by Lex- 
ington, dam unknown, and she was bought by William Wood- 
ward at two hundred and fifty dollars, and he named her Waxy. 
The sale was slimly attended and much of the stock was bid in 
for the owner, Mr. John Anderson. That night the Avine flowed 
very freely, as it was the initiation of the "tenderfoot," Mr. 
Woodward, into the ranks of running-horse men. After they all 
"got hot" (except Eotf), a sweepstakes was opened for the three^ 
fillies, Ada C. (the Revenue filly), Lilly Hitchcock and Waxy, at 
two hundred and fifty dollars each, and Eoff was careful to see 
that it was made "play or pay." The race was a dash of a mile 
and a quarter, and it took place nearly twelve months after the 
match was made. Eoff won easily with Lilly Hitchcock, and 
AVaxy was so badly beaten that Woodward gave her away on the 
spot and "swore off" ever owning another running horse. Thus 
Eoff's cunning carried his plot through, without a break at any 
point. From the hour he bought this filly he stoutly maintained 



444 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

she was by Lexington and out of the Brawner's Eclipse mare. 
She ran all her races under this pedigree and never was chal- 
lenged, and if ever there was a mare in California bred in this 
way, this is likely to be the mare. We can understand just how 
he could have discovered where Waxy came from, and that she 
never saw Kentucky, and on this knowledge he based the game 
he played on poor Woodward, 

After the failure to establish the claim that Waxy came out of 
Philip Swigert's Grey Eagle mare and publicly confessing that 
the evidence upon which Mr, Gould and Mr. Brodhead based 
their conclusions was fallacious and the conclusions themselves 
incorrect, the advocates of ''more running blood in the trotter" 
pulled themselves together for another bout. What purported 
to be an old document was dug up somewhere — indeed I am told 
there were two of them dug up, one in Kentucky and the other 
somewhere on the Pacific coast — purporting to be duplicates of an 
agreement entered into, in March, 1804, between John P, Welch, 
of California and Philip Swigert, of Kentucky, by which Welch 
agreed to take certain blood horses to California and sell or breed 
them on the shares, etc. This document possessed all the 
paraphernalia of authenticity, with government stamp, witnesses 
to the signatures of the contracting parties, etc. This docu- 
ment (I don't know which "duplicate") was shown to me in 
April, 1891, and at the first glance, and without reading a word 
except the date, it astounded me. There was a paper purporting 
to be twenty-seven years old, and it looked as bright and fresh as 
though it had been written within twenty-seven hours. There 
was no fading of the luster of the ink and there was no ageing in 
the color of the paper. Having devoted a great deal of time to 
the examination of writings, varying in age from one day to a 
hundred years and more, and this experience extending through 
many years, I ought to be a fairly competent judge of the eifects 
of age on ink and paper. Here was a paper purporting to be 
over a quarter of a century old with all the newness of yesterday, 
and when Mr. J. C. Simpson showed it to me I was impressed 
with the belief, on this one point of evidence alone, that it was 
spurious, and that Mr. Simpson had been made a victim by some 
rascally scrivener. With so much for the appearance of the paper, 
on its face, we will now examine the contents and see whether 
any evidence can there be found that will throw further light on 
the question of its authenticity. Unfortunately I have not what 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGEEES. 44,3. 

purports to be the original of this document before me, and I 
must therefore depend upon my memory and upon what Judge 
Hulsey, as attorney for Mr. Brodhead, has printed as the con- 
tents. In giving the list of animals I will follow the order of the 
"document" and place before each one, for convenience of refer- 
ence, the number attached to that animal in Mr. Welch's original 
inventory. 

15. One gray mare, by Grey Eagle, out of Mary Morris. 

16. One sorrel mare, Hope, by Glencoe. 

17. Sovereign filly, out of Grey Eagle mare, four years old. 
8. Vandal filly, out of bay Grey Eagle mare, four years old. 

18. One two-year-old filly, by Bob Johnson, out of bay Grey Eagle mare, 

19. One two-year-old filly by Lexington. 

20. One yearling colt, by Lexington, out of Grey Eagle mare. 

21. One two-year-old filly, by Ringgold, out of Hope. 

In looking over this list there are several j^oints suggested for 
remark and they all have a bearing, more or less direct, on the 
question at issue. The list seems to have been prepared, if -pre- 
pared by Mr, Swigert, very hurriedly and without sufficient re- 
gard to completeness or accuracy. He started oif, possibly to 
make a careful list, as he gave the color of the tAvo-year-old iiiares 
at the head and then dropped all purpose of completeness and 
gave no colors nor descriptions to those that followed. He gives 
No, 21 as a filly when it was a colt, and so appears in the inven- 
tory, was sold as a colt with pedigree at San Jose, January, 1865, 
and again, with the same pedigree, at The Willows, February, 
1866, Under ordinary conditions the statement of the breeder 
should be conclusive against all others, but in this case the evi- 
dent hurry and absence of descriptions have destroyed the value 
of the whole list, in great degree, as evidence that could be ac- 
cepted with safety. We must, therefore, look for something 
in the way of evidence more deliberative and descriptive in its 
preparation, and this Ave find in the joint work of Mr, Swigert and 
Mr, Welch, as embodied in the inventory. When the descrip- 
tions of the animals were taken, both men were equally interested 
in accuracy and completeness, both were present, and probably 
the animals were before them. Hence my infinitely greater con- 
fidence in the deliberative work of the two, as found in the in 
ventory. 

The one point about which all this hubbub has been raised is 
the so-called "Lexington filly," that appears as the sixth in the 



446 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

above list. She has no number attached to lier name, and this 
means that she was not in the inventory, and it means more than 
this; for it is, in a manner, the dying testimony of an honest man 
that he took no Lexington lilly to California, and fortunately 
this testimony has been preserved. The methods introduced to 
prove that Welch did take her are the methods of the imbecile. 
Let us admit, for the moment, that Swigert had a Lexington 
filly and that she was in a contract with Welch to be taken to 
California; does that prove that Welch took her, when he says 
he did not? There are hundreds and hundreds of people every 
year who buy steamship tickets to go to Europe who fail to go. 
The records of Mr. Swigert's ticket office show that the ticket 
was bought, but they fail to show that the purchaser went aboard 
the ship. You must go to Purser Welch and get a list of passen- 
gers actually on board in order to determine who did and who 
did not go. Accidents, sickness and death are all factors in the 
movements of horses just as they are in the movements of human 
beings. It is the observation of a long lifetime that horsemen 
are never so near their best as fools as when they attempt to 
establish a fraudulent pedigree by evidence that utterly fails to 
cover the case. They claim to have found a ticket that would 
carry Waxy to California, and Avhether genuine or counterfeit 
they rely wholly on this ticket as evidence that she went. The 
master of the vessel affirms she was not aboard his vessel, and in 
support of this he shows a complete list and description of the 
passengers numbered from one to twenty-six inclusive. This is 
the whole thing in a nutshell. The proof is clear and conclusive 
that Mr. Welch did not take any daughter of Lexington to Cali- 
fornia. Now, will the prominent and active supporters of Waxy's 
pedigree, as a daughter of Lexington, come forward and in a 
manly way answer this question of five words? " WJio took Waxy 
to California?" If Welch, prove it. If anybody .else, prove it. 
We may be able to catch a few gulls with chaff, the first attempt, 
but we can't repeat it. If the question can be answered, it is 
well, and if not, honest people will form their own conclusions 
that it is not sustained and is no more worthy of belief than the 
"Grey Eagle mare" form of the same pedigree, which is now 
universally conceded to be a fiction. 

American Eclipse, — It is not my purpose to frighten people 
by overthrowing landmarks that have stood for years, but it is 
"my purpose to tell the truth and expose falsehood in pedigrees 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 447 

wherever I meet it. As a satisfaction and guide to breeders in 
the future it is important to know just how the early stock were 
bred, although they may have belonged to past generations. A 
breeder never can know too much of the lines in which he is 
operating. This great horse was a good chestnut, with a star 
and left hind foot white. He was stout, with heavy limbs, and 
somewhat coarse, and not of the best quality, but possibly better 
than the average of the Durocs. He was a fraction of au inch 
below fifteen two. He was foaled 1814, got by Duroc, son of im- 
ported Diomed; dam Miller's Damsel, by imported Messenger; 
grandam a mare by Pot8os, imported by Mr. Constable along 
Avith the horse Baronet, in 1795. This is just as far as we can go 
with any certainty, and this leaves the greatest race horse of his 
clay far short of being thoroughbred. When Mr. Constable 
bought the PotSos mare in England he got no certificate of 
pedigree, but he was told there she was out of a mare by Gim- 
€rack. Mr. Cadwallader R. Colden was the best-informed man 
of his day on the history, blood, and performances of the blood- 
horse, was a very intimate and warm friend of Mr. Constable, and 
he did everything that could be done to straighten out and ex- 
tend this pedigree, but he utterly failed. He thought it proba- 
ble that the mare was thoroughbred, but he believed the Gim- 
€rack cross was a fiction. Some eighteen or twenty years ago, 
when in London, Mr. Tattersall suggested to me that if Lord 
Grosvenor bred a filly by PotSos in 1792 that was thoroughbred, 
there could hardly be a doubt that she Avas entered in some of 
the stakes for three-year-olds. Then and there we searched the 
old records, but nothing could be found to support the supposed 
pedigree. It was not till 1832 that any special effort Avas made 
to establish the pedigree through the press, and in January of 
that year the famous Patrick Nesbit Edgar, of North Carolina, 
wrote as follows to Mr. Skinner, editor of the American lurf 
Register : 

"The authority I bad for sending the remote pedigree of American Elipse 
for publication was that it was furnished me lately by a gentleman in Eng- 
land, who put himself to uncommon pains to procure it. He resides near 
Bath, in that country. All the authority requisite I have at this time in my 
possession. The PotSos mare was got by Pottos; her dam, foaled in 1778, by 
Gimcrack, out of Snap-Dragon, sister to Angelica by Snap. (See Engli-sh Stud 
Book.)" 

Mr. Edgar Avrote more on the same subject, after he was 



448 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

pressed to it by Mr. Golden, but he failed to produce any evi- 
dence whatever that he was telling the truth. According to his 
representations his correspondence on the subject had been very 
extensive, and he complained that he had paid out forty shillings 
in postage. 

It will be observed how cleverly Mr. Edgar conceals the sources 
of his information while he pretends to give them, and that has 
been the favorite "dodge" of all rascally "pedigree makers" 
from that day till the present. Mr. Constable always insisted 
that the mare was bred by Lord Grosvenor, and that she was by 
PotSos, but he did not insist that she was out of a mare by Gim- 
crack. As Lord Grosvenor was one of the most prominent of 
all breeders of race horses in his day, and as he evidently kept 
the records of his stud with more care than most of his contem- 
poraries, we might reasonably expect to find some trace of this 
mare if she was thoroughbred. After a careful and diligent 
search of all the records of that period, it is found that Lord 
Grosvenor never bred a Gimcrack filly to PotSos. This disposes 
of Mr. Edgar's humbug story, and when we state the pedigree of 
American Eclipse we can simply say he was got by Duroc; dam 
Miller's Damsel by Messenger, and grandam the imported PotSos 
mare, and there we must stop. 

For years past I have observed that the less a man knows about 
horse history and horse achievements, the more importance he 
attaches to the word "thoroughbred ;" and of all the millions 
and millions of lies that have been told about pedigrees 
nine-tenths have been concocted and circulated for the one 
purpose of enhancing the supposed value of the animal by claim- 
ing "thoroughbred" blood. The "instinct" to lie about pedi- 
grees, so common among certain classes of horsemen, seems to 
be "the sum of inherited habits" that has come down from gen- 
eration to generation. If you ask one of these mendacious gen- 
tlemen whether American Eclipse was a thoroughbred he will 
answer, with a strong marked expression of contempt and pity 
for your ignorance on his countenance, "Certainly he was thor- 
oughbred." If you then ask him about his pedigree he will answer, 
"I don't know anything about his pedigree." Then you ven- 
ture to ask how he knows he was thoroughbred if he does not 
know anything about his pedigree, and he will squelch you com- 
pletely by saying, "No horse not thoroughbred could ever have 
done what American Eclipse did." Here we get at the real basis 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGKEES. 4-49 

of the universal mendacity on this subject. The preacher wrote 
a great book called "The Perfect Horse" in which he maintained 
that the Morgan Horse was thoroughbred. The lawyer wrote 
another great book on "The American Roadster" in which he 
maintained that Dexter was a thoroughbred. With two gentle- 
men of intelligence and education writing such miserable stuff, 
what are we to expect from the masses? 

Now here is the horse American Eclipse, the greatest horse of 
his day in his racing achievements, that in his blood is very far 
from being "thoroughbred," under any rule that has ever been 
suggested or devised. Now, with this taint on his escutcheon, 
it follows that no one of his descendants for at least five genera- 
tions can be classed as thoroughbred. As a progenitor, Eclipse 
cannot be considered a great horse, either in his immediate or 
more remote descendants. Medoc was about his best, and he was 
better than his sire. Another son, called Monmouth Eclipse, was 
grandly bred on the side of his dam, was sold, it was said, for 
fifteen thousand dollars for stock purposes, and proved a most 
lamentable failure, never having got a colt that was worth fifteen 
dollars as a race horse. The great fame of American Eclipse, 
therefore, rested upon what were then designated as "his migiity 
achievements upon the turf." A reasonably complete history of 
this horse may be found in Wallace's Monthly for March, 1877, 
p. 100. His great race against Henry, in Avhich he represented 
the North as against the South, was doubtless the most memora- 
ble turf event that ever took place on this continent, and a very 
brilliant description of it will be found at the reference given 
above. This race of four-mile heats took place on the Union 
Course, Long Island, May, 1823, for twenty thousand dollars a 
side, and it was, in effect, Eclipse against the world. Eclipse, 
fit or not fit, must start, while his opponents had several prepared 
to start against him and all they had to determine was to select 
the fastest and best of the whole party. At the last hour Henry 
was chosen as the champion of the South, and he won the first 
heat by about a length in 7:37^. A change was made in the 
rider of Eclipse and he won the second heat by about two lengths 
in 7:49. In the third heat the instructions to the rider of Henry 
were not to hurry the gait, but to trail to near the finish and 
then pull out and win in a rush. The rider of Eclipse under- 
stood the tactics of the enemy and he hurried the pace every step 
of the way, in order to tire out his younger opponent. When 



450 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

near the finish Henry made his dash and covered Eclipse's 
quarter with his head, but he could get no further and abandoned 
the contest. Eclipse had been punished unmercifully from start 
to finish, and the time of the heat was 8:24, This shows an 
average rate of speed in the third heat of two minutes and six 
seconds to the mile, a rate which half a dozen trotters and a 
round dozen of pacers have beaten for a single mile. It shows 
also the cruelty, to say nothing of the absurdity, of heat racing 
at the distance of four miles. Still American Eclipse was the 
greatest running horse of his generation. 

Boston was a chestnut horse, foaled 1833, and bred by Mr. Jolni 
Wickham, the very eminent jurist, of Richmond, Virginia. He 
succeeded to the great fame of American Eclipse, and although 
about two generations, in a racing sense, after him there was no 
horse between them that was the equal of either of them. He 
was a terror to all competitors Avhether of the North or the South. 
But it is only my purpose here to put on record the real facts 
about his pedigree and to expose a glaring fraud that has been 
propagated concerning his breeding for many years. Mr. Wick- 
ham, the breeder of Boston, bought a mare by imported Alder- 
man (1802 or 1803) from John Randolph, of Tuckahoe (not 
"Roanoke" as sometimes stated). This mare was out of a mare 
by imported Clockfast, and here, to sum it up and give Mr. 
Wickham's exact language, as he wrote in 1827: "This mare, a 
dark bay, foaled about 1799, was got by Alderman, her dam by 
Clockfast, out of a mare said to be full-blooded, of the Wildair 
blood." This Alderman mare he bred to Florizel, and she pro- 
duced the race horse Tuckahoe, and a filly that was bred to 
Timoleon and produced Boston. Then Boston's pedigree stands; 
Got by Timoleon; dam by Florizel; grandam by imported Alder- 
man; great-grandam by imported Clockfast; great-great-grandam 
"said to be of the Wildair blood." This is down to "hard pan," 
and there is no authority in the wide world to add anything to it. 
If we admit the Wildair mare to be genuine and authentic we 
are still one degree short of the thoroughbred standard. The 
six additional crosses that have been added to this pedigree are 
entirely fictitious. They were copied from the advertisement of 
a stallion descended from this maternal line, that had neither 
indorsement nor name attached to it. This was seized upon by 
the late Benjamin Bruce, and boasted of as a "discovery" of the 
extension of Boston's pedigree. After the appearance of this 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 451 

•advertisement Mr. Wickham prepared and published a full list of 
his stock, with their pedigrees, from the first of his breeding oper- 
ations, and Avhen he reached the Wildair mare he stopped, just as 
I have stopped at that point. Here we have the two authorities 
— Mr. John Wickham, distinguished for his eminent character as 
a man and a jurist; or a nameless stallion advertisement without 
any shadow of truth or responsibility. 

Timoleon, the sire of Boston, was one of the most distinguished 
sons of the great Sir Archy, his dam was by imported Saltram, and 
hisgrandam by Wildair, but beyond that the pedigree is a hopeless 
muddle, embracing some features that are absolutely impossible. 

Tom Bowling and Aaron Pennington. — The first of these 
horses was by Lexington, the second was by Tipperary, son of 
Einggold, and they were both out of Lucy Fowler, by imported 
Albion, grandam by imported Leviathan, great-grandam by Top 
Gallant, great-great-grandam Eli Odom's saddle mare, which 
means, in that country, she was a pacer. Tom Bowling was 
probably the best race horse of his year, and Pennington may be 
classed as mediocre, but as the latter is credited with some pacers 
or trotters that have come within the 2:30 list, his pedigree be- 
comes of interest on this account. I will, therefore, give the 
facts in some detail, which go to show the truth about what the 
pedigree contains and what it does not contain. 

In 1869 the late William R. EUiston, of Nashville, Tennessee, 
furnished me the following facts, which he obtained personally 
from Mr. Eli Odom. It was very fortunate that Mr. Elliston ob- 
tained these facts when he did, for Mr. Odom was advanced in years 
and died not long afterward. He was a brother-in-law of the 
once very famous breeder and race horse man. Colonel Elliott, of 
Tennessee, and in early life had charge of his establishment and 
knew more about Colonel Elliott's stock than he did himself. 
He lived to old age, highly respected by all who knew him, and 
was a man of truth. He kept for his own use a pacing saddle 
mare whose blood he knew notlring about, and he bred her to Top 
Gallant, son of Gallatin, and the produce was a filly. This filly 
he bred to imported Leviathan, and in due time there came an- 
other filly which he bred to imported Albion, and the next filly 
was Lucy Fowler. This filly passed through the hands of a Mr. 
Fowler and perhaps one or two others, and at last became the 
property of Price McGrath, of Lexington, Kentucky, and was the 
dam of Tom Bowling, Aaron Pennington and others. Starting 



452 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

in with the pacing mare, Mr, Odom bred all that followed until 
we reach Lucy Fowler, and there we find she had seven parts of 
running blood and one part of jjacing blood. While an animal 
bred in this way is certainly not "thoroughbred," nobody can 
deny that he is "running-bred," for there are hundreds of in- 
stances on record where animals of even shorter pedigrees than 
Tom Bowling have been noted race horses. But there is an- 
other fact connected with this family that is very interesting. 
When the running qualities of Pennington were exhausted, 
McGrath presented him to a kinsman of his, somewhere in Western 
Missouri. After awhile I began to hear of an occasional trotter 
from this horse and I wrote his owner (whose name I cannot now 
recall), and he replied that "he went all the saddle gaits and was 
a pacer." Here was a tidbit that I thought well worth looking 
after, and I wrote the owner again for specific information of the 
character of his pace and whether it was a clean and pronounced 
side action, but for some reason or other I never was able to get 
a reply to my questions. There can be no mistake about his 
going the "saddle gaits," but whether this was the result of 
training or whether he took to them naturally as inherited from 
Mr. Odom's old pacing mare, is a point about which I have never 
been fully satisfied. 

Grey Eagle (Chenery's). — When Mr. Winthrop W. Chenery, 
of Boston, bought this horse, about 1866, he got with him the 
following pedigree, 

" Got by Grey Eagle; dam by imp. Trustee; g.d. by Columbus; g.g.d. by 
Stockholder; gggd. by Pacolet. Bred in Kentucky, and passed through 
many vicissitudes, both as a runner and a trotter, beating his competitors at 
both gaits; owned for a time in Ohio, now the property of Winthrop W. 
Chenery & Co., Boston." 

This was a correct type of the pedigrees of that time, lacking 
date, location, breeder and all other things necessary to trace and 
determine its value. The horse had certainly trotted in 2:31, 
and he had trotted two miles to wagon in 5:09^, and to this evi- 
dence of his trotting ability it was claimed that he had run and won 
many races at all distances. This was such a combination of abil- 
ities as I never had heard of before, and in attempting to solve the 
riddle I became deeply interested. The search then instituted 
has been kept up over since, and I must say that after all these 
years I know absolutely nothing about the breeding of this 
horse. His first known owner was a petty gambler and general 



INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 453 

outlaw in the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, and the story 
he told will be found in Wallace's Monthly, Vol. I., p. 53, and Vol. 
VII., p. 597, besides other references. The search has been so 
barren that I have not even the shadow of a theory as to what 
his blood may have been. He got two or three trotters and one 
or two pacers, I think, and here we have to leave him as the most 
completely unknown horse in all my experience. 

George Wilkes. — It is a grievous misfortune that the pedi- 
gree of this great progenitor should be in doubt. The misfor- 
tune is not in the fact that his descendants lose the supposed 
Clay cross in his dam, for that was not of very great value, but 
in the fact that we should not know just what belongs in its place. 
In December, 1877, I had the good fortune to meet with Mr. 
Harry Felter and Mr. William L. Simmons at a breeders' banquet, 
and it was not long until we were in conversation about the blood 
of the dam of George Wilkes. I knew that the breeding of that 
horse had never been established, but I was greatly surprised 
that these two gentlemen — one the breeder and the other the 
owner of Wilkes — had never made any effort to trace and estab- 
lish so important a fact. Mr. Felter stated that he had bought 
the mare from Mr. W. A. Delevan, and that Mr. Delevan had 
bought her from Mr. Joseph S. Lewis, of Geneva, New York. 
Thereupon I wrote to Mr. Lewis and the following is his re- 
sponse: 

"Soiue twenty-six years since I bought a brown mare from a gentleman by 
the name of James Gilbert, then living in the town of Phelps, in this county, 
for a friend, and very soon after sold her to W. A. Delevan, of New York. 
She was then about five years old, a fine roadster, and could speed in about 
3:30. He took her to New York, and after driving her some time sold her to 
my esteemed friend, Harry Felter. I think she passed into the hands of his 
father, and met with an accident. She was put to breeding, and had a colt by 
Kysdyk's Hambletonian, that grew up to be the famous George Wilkes. For 
the benefit of many persons in New York I lost no time in looking about to 
learn the pedigree of the mare and of the horse that got her. On seeing Gil- 
bert I learned that he got the mare of an old man who is now dead, by the 
name of Josiah Philips, of Bristol, in this county. I lost no time in sending 
a man, who lived with us at the time, by the name of John S. Dey, to Bristol, 
to get all the facts in t'.ie mare's pedigree that he could get hold of. He learned 
through Philips that the father of this mare was the old Wadsworth Henry 
Clay, owned for many years by General Wadsworth, of Genesee. There is 
no mistake about this, as I have since learned from his neighbors that she was 
a Clay colt. Philips further stated that the mother of the mare was got by a 
horse called Highlander, a good horse, and owned in that section of country. 



454 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

T have no doubt about tliis, as there was such a horse in that section about 
that time. When I go to Buffalo, where Gilbert now lives, I may be able to 
get at more facts in regard to your inquiry, and if I can get hold of anything 
tliat will give more light on the subject before I am down in New York, I will 
drop into your office to see you. Very truly yours, etc. 

"J. S. Lewis." 

The receipt of this letter, so straightforward and clean-cut in 
its statements, developed a mystery that was incomprehensible 
to me. Dates, names, places, circumstances, all stand out as evi- 
dences of tlie truth of the representations, and also as evidences 
that Mr. Lewis had fully investigated the matter, and given the 
results of his investigations to his friends in this city; still, those 
friends had never heard the facts, or had entirely forgotten them. 
As there was a strong prejudice against Clay blood in certain 
quarters, it occurred to me that possibly that cross had been left 
in abeyance so long that it really had been forgotten. This did 
not clear up the mystery, however, and I determined to have the 
whole matter investigated from a different starting point. I 
submitted the matter to Mr. John P. Kay, a very capable and 
very honest man, and he kindly and without reward undertook 
the investigation. The Philips family lived in the vicinity of 
Bristol, and the first of the family met by Mr. Ray was Mr. E. V. 
Philips, nephew and adopted son of Joshua Philips (not Josiah, 
as Mr. Lewis had it), and he enumerated several head of Clays 
that had been owned by his uncle Joshua, among them a mare 
that was bred by Mr. Clark Philips, bought of him when a year- 
ling by E. V. Philips, sold as a four-year-old to his uncle Joshua, 
and by him the next year to "some man from the eastern part 
of the country." He next met Mr. Clark Philips, who fully 
confirmed E. V. Philips about the Clay filly already referred to 
and said she was got when old Henry Clay was owned by Kent 
and Bailey of Bristol, and that her dam was "Old Telegraph" by 
Highlander, etc. In his original report to me of his investiga- 
tion Mr. Ray uses the following language: 

" When Henry Clay was being brou ht from the East to his home in West- 
ern New York, he stopped one night at the hotel then kept in Bristol by Dr. 
Durgan, deceased (the breeder of Castle Boy), and made a season at this place 
the following year, when he became the property of Kent & Bailey. He was 
kept in that town for several years, etc." 

Now, as between the original and voluntary statement of Cap- 
tain Lewis and the investigation carried through by Mr. Ray, 



INVESTIGATION" OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 455 

there is no conflict and all is smooth sailing, and upon the infor- 
mation derived from these two sources the pedigree of George 
Wilkes was decided as established by the Board of Censors. But 
more recent discoveries made by Mr. Ray, in which I have no 
doubt he is thoroughly conscientious and possibly thoroughly 
right, have raised a conflict that is irrepressible, for dates are 
involved and insisted upon that make the pedigree impossible. 
In his original statement Mr. Ray says that Henry Clay made 
the season of 1846 at Bristol, "when he became the property of 
Kent & Bailey. He was kept in that town for some 'years." 
Up to this point there is no contradiction and no impossibility; 
Ray agrees with Lewis and Lewis agrees with Ray. But in the 
past two or three years Mr. Ray believes he has secured addi- 
tional information, and this places Captain Lewis in a very un- 
enviable position. The whole point of Clark Philips' evidence is 
that he bred his mare "Old Telegraph" to Henry Clay when that 
horse was owned by Bailey Brothers, of Bristol, and I suppose 
they were the successors of Kent & Bailey of an earlier date. 
Now, as Mr. Ray told us in his first investigation that Henry Clay 
passed into the hands of Kent & Bailey in 1847, and as he tells 
us later that he did not pass into their hands till nine or ten 
years after that date and then fails to fix the precise year, it must 
be conceded by all that his information is not wholly satisfactory. 
Recollections may be ever so honest, but they are of various 
degrees of reliability. The best and final evidence is the service 
book of the horse. My best judgment of the whole matter is 
that Mr. Ray's later information is probably correct, but until 
all doubt is removed by the production of some contemporaneous 
record covering the case there must remain an element of uncer- 
tainty attaching to the pedigree. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 

Early trotting and pacing races — Strains of blood in tbe first known trotters 
— The lesson of Maud S. — Tbe genesis of trottlng-borse literature — Tbe 
simple study of inheritance — Tbe different forms of heredity — The famous 
quagga story not sustained — Illustrations in dogs — Heredity of acquired 
characters and instincts — Development of successive generations necessary 
— Unequaled collections of statistics — Acquired injuries and unsoundnesil 
transmitted. 

As preparatory to taking up the consideration of the breeding 
problem, it may be well to look back a little and see what had 
transpired in the trotting-horse world, leading up to the serious 
consideration of how he was bred. It has been generally ac- 
cepted as true that there were no trotting contests in this coun- 
try till about the second decade of the present century, but this 
impression has grown out of the fact that the newspapers, down 
to that period, failed to report such contests. It is historically 
true that pacing races were a common amusement among the 
people of different portions of the colonies nearly two hundred 
years ago. This is established by the legislative action of some 
of the colonies, in the first half of the last century, in suppress- 
ing all "pacing and trotting races." It is well to note, in pass- 
ing, that pacers and trotters of that early period were commin- 
gled, just as they are to-day, with the former the more prominent, 
and the more highly prized. Of that hundred years of silence 
we have no details and but few historical references that were 
contemporaneous with the events. Hence we are practically de- 
pendent upon the legislative action of the colonies to establish 
the truth beyond question. 

When we reach the period when the newspapers began to re- 
port some of the more conspicuous and important trotting events 
about Philadelphia and New York, we find a condition of things 
for which we are hardly prepared. The pacer has lost his prom- 
inence and is but little in evidence, and all the best trotters seem 



HOW THE TKOTTING HORSE IS BRED. 457 

to be descended from the imported horse Messenger. The best 
performers of that period were as follows: 

Topgallant Betsy Baker - Washington 

Paul Pry Sir Peter Sally Miller 

Dutcliman Screwdriver Greenwich Maid 

Jersey Fagdown Chancellor Charlotte Temple 

Commander (Bull) Whalebone Confidence 

.Gipsy Lady Suffolk Rattler 

Bull Calf Andrew Jackson Lady Salisbury 

Lady Warrenton Fanny Pullen Modesty 

These were all descended from Messenger, and with the excep- 
tion of Edwin Forrest and one or two others, believed to be de- 
scended from pacing blood, they were the leading performers of 
their day. All of the above animals Avere not equally strong in 
Messenger blood as three of them were by sons and out of 
daughters of Messenger, five were by sons of Messenger, and all 
the others had more or less of his blood. More than eighty years 
ago the descendants of Messenger, wherever known, were recog- 
nized as a family of trotters and this broad fact became a kind of 
universal belief among horsemen. This belief, being founded on 
a truth, was all right, but a plausible deduction from it, which 
was not a truth, inflicted a terrible penalty upon the pockets of 
otherwise intelligent men for a period of more than fifty years 
before they discovered their error. The postulate was in this 
form: ''Messenger was a thoroughbred horse and founded a 
great family of trotters, hence, any other thoroughbred horse, 
under the same conditions, would have accomplished the same 
results." This "stock" form of the argument was plausible and it 
was in everybody's mouth from one end of the land to the other. 
Every stable boy, every breeder, every editor believed the deduc- 
tion was sound, and, I may as well own it, I believed it myself 
until I had gathered together all the accessible trotting statistics 
of this country and reduced them to order and method, so that 
they might be studied and their true teachings be drawn from 
them. As an illustration of the ignorant intolerance and dis 
honesty with which certain editors and their followers main- 
tained, less than twenty years ago, that all that was of any value 
in the trotter was inherited from the runner, take the following: 
In the autumn of 1878 the famous Maud S., then four years 
old, came out and trotted a mile in 3:17^, which was then a 
world's wonder. She was a pacer of the plastic type, but she 



458 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

had to wear toe-weights through all her brilliant career to keep 
her on her gait as a trotter. Everybody was astounded at this 
phenomenal performance and went wild over it as something 
that had never been done before, by a four-year-old, and proba- 
bly never would be done again. On this performance I simply 
remarked, in the Mordhly: 

"Her trotting inheritance is very strong and well defined on both sides of 
the house, and she has a right to trot, and trot fast, and her 2:17| shows that 
she trots instinctively, and without much training; and in this she is phenome- 
nal. She is simply a little in advance of her time; for no truth is more fully 
sustained by analogy and reason than that, in a few generation of judicious 
selections, such mares will not be phenomenal." 

From this four-year-old record of 2:171 in 1878, we pass on to 
the two-year-old record of 2:10| in 1891. A four-year-old now 
trotting in 2:17^ is only commonplace. It was not a gift of 
"prophecy" nor an overwrought enthusiasm, therefore, that 
enabled me to determine that 2:17^ for a four-year-old would 
become commonplace, but a study of the laws of breeding in the 
light of all past trotting experiences. When this performance 
was made the late B. G. Bruce, of Lexington, Kentucky, then 
editor of a sporting paper, went into ecstasies over it and was at 
once able to show, to his own mind, that it was all owing to the 
running blood in Maud S. that enabled her to show phenomenal 
speed. He figured this all out and showed that she possessed 
eleven-sixteenths of what he called "pure blood," to five-six- 
teenths of what he called "cold blood." In winding up his 
article, he says: 

"In conclusion we deem it evident from her form and action that the great 
power of Maud S. comes from her pure blood; that her breeding back on the 
form and action, courage and endurance of the blood horse is the very reason 
why she is so superior to all four-year-olds that have ever appeared. And an- 
other point is obvious: the pure blood matures so much earlier than the cold 
blood that years are gained in development over the cold-blooded trotter." 

Now instead of Maud S. possessing eleven-sixteenths of "pure 
blood," as claimed by Mr. Bruce, it has never been shown and 
never can be shown that she possessed one single drop of "pure 
blood." When Sally Russell, the grandam of Maud S., was sold 
to Mr. R. A. Alexander, she was sold under a fraudulent pedi- 
gree, and when Pilot Jr. was sold to Mr. Alexander an utterly 
impossible pedigree was manufactured for him. In both cases 
he was the victim of sharpers, for in his life and character he 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 459 

stood away above all suspicion. The pedigrees of Pilot Jr. and 
Sally Russell have been fully considered in Chapter XXIX. of this 
volume. 

After publishing "The American Stud Book" in 1867, and the 
first volume of the "Trotting Register" in 1871, and having care- 
fully compiled all past trotting races and trotting experiences, 
up to the close of 1872, it began to dawn upon me that possi- 
bly I had been handling a great many fictions and thereby given 
them an indorsement to the world as truths. This "gave me 
pause," as well as many a sleepless night and anxious day. The 
old adage, "What everybody says must be true," gave me no com- 
fort, for I had just found that Mr. "Everybody" was a great liar. 
Then a higher and purer maxim suggested itself to my mind, 
"One, with the truth on his side, is a majority," and under this 
banner I enlisted for the war which I knew was coming. Having 
compiled the pedigrees of all running horses and all trotting 
horses, so far as known, up to 1870, and more especially having 
gathered up all past trotting experiences and statistics, I felt 
that I was equipped to enter the lists with everybody against me. 
I knew I was liable to meet antagonists on every side, and some 
of them of great ability, but at the same time I knew they had 
neither the armor of truth nor the weapons of facts at their com- 
mand. Mere prejudices and the limping opinions that spring 
from them have no force in an earnest combat. The platfoi*m 
upon which I stood was aggressive, but simple and easily compre- 
hended, viz., "The English horse Messenger, in his own right 
and by his own power, founded a family of trotters — something 
which no other English horse had ever been able to take the first 
step toward accomplishing." This was the central point around 
which the battle raged, and to it I added the pacer as a subsidiary 
or minor source of speed, equally certain in fact, but not equally 
well defined in lines of descent, nor equally important in num- 
bers and value. From these major and minor sources it is liter- 
ally true that all our trotters have descended. In confirmation 
of this, a very capable and careful writer in the New York Sun, 
within the past few months, has said: "Hambletonian is the pro- 
genitor of ninety per cent, of tlie fast trotters now on the turf." 
When we start with Hambletonian, the triple great-grandson of 
Messenger, we are safely within the period of records of both 
blood and performances, and we are relieved from some possible 
uncertainties in the earlier period of Messenger himself, hence 



4t}0 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

the writer quoted above is at bed-rock in the sources of his in- 
formation. This makes my major proposition so j)l^in and so 
triumphantly sustained that it is doubtful whether there is now 
living an intelligent horseman who would even think of disput- 
ing it. 

In the spring of 1872 I wrote a series of articles under the 
caption of "How shall we breed the Trotting Horse?" which was 
publislied in the Spirit of the Tijiies in February and March 
of that year. These papers were revised and enlarged and pub- 
lished, as an introductory treatise on breeding the trotter, in the 
second volume of the "American Trotting Register." This 
treatise is the genesis of all discussions in which the laws govern- 
ing the breeding of the trotter are considered. Up to that period 
contributions to the press on breeding subjects were generally 
transient and confined to the writer's own experience. If he was 
trying to breed trotters a comparison of his material always 
corresponded with his arguments, and the only thing he demon- 
strated was his own inability to see over the fence surrounding 
his own paddocks. I love a man who loves his horse, and, as a 
man, I cannot dislike him because he thinks his horse is the very 
acme of all equine perfection, although he may be a worthless 
brute; but when a man spends a whole lifetime in trying to breed 
trotters from blood that cannot trot, I lose all respect for his men- 
tal operations. The man who cannot widen out and take profit 
from the demonstrated experiences of the whole trotting world, 
had better turn his attention to some business suited to his 
capacity. Not a single thought advanced nor a position taken 
in the article referred to has ever been successfully controverted, 
although they excited much opposition. An attempt was made 
to laugh the phrase "trotting instinct" out of court, but that 
little phrase not only held the fortress, but became, as it were, 
the basis of the whole system of thought represented in the 
treatise. It had a meaning and a fitness in what it meant that 
put it in everybody's mouth, and there it stays for all time. In- 
stinct is "the sum of inherited habits;" and these five words ex- 
press the best practical definition of its meaning that I have ever 
met with. 

The Laws that Govern. — In all animal life the resemblance 
of the offspring to the parents is the universal law. The law is 
not only true in the physical conformation of the offspring, but 
it is also true in the mentality and instinctivity of the offsprings 



HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 4G1 

In former years it was very aptly termed the law of inheritance, 
but the more general usage is now the law of heredity. In 
xjasting about for a definition of this newly coined word, I have 
not been able to find anything more comprehensive and express- 
ive than that given, by Ribot, in the opening sentence of his work 
on this subject. He says: 

"Heredity is that biological law by wliicb all beings endowed with life tend 
"to repeat themselves in their descendants; it is for tbe species what personal 
identity is for tbe individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid 
incessant variation; by it Nature ever copies and imitates herself." 

This has been the law ever since the command went forth, 
"Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, 
<cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind." 
Hence sprang the varieties, species, genera and orders into which 
naturalists have sought to classify the animal kingdom. In gen- 
erations long past our ancestors used such phrases as "Like 
father, like son," "Trot father, trot mother, trot colt," "Like 
begets like," etc., meaning just what we mean to-day by the 
word "heredity." While heredity is a universal law of animal 
life, it must be remembered that its results cannot be pre-deter- 
mined by any rule of arithmetic. Every colt has a sire and a 
dam, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and then 
sixteen, and next thirty-two progenitors. Here we have five 
generations embracing sixty-two different animals, and the ex- 
periences of many years have gone to show that if these sixty-two 
animals are all purely bred in the breed which you are seeking to 
secure there is a re'^sonable certainty that your prospective colt 
will be a good representative of that breed. By this I mean that 
with this number of generations there is but little danger of your 
colt following some undesirable type outside of and beyond these 
five generations. The only way to study this problem intelli- 
gently and with satisfaction is to tabulate the pedigrees of the 
two animals you propose to couple and then study each individual 
of the different generations and see what each one has done in 
the direction you are breeding. If you are breeding for a Derby 
winner you want every one of the sixty-two to have proved himself 
or herself a first-class runner, and you don't want a single drop of 
outside blood in any of them. If you are breeding for the two- 
minute trotter, you don't want any blood but the fastest trotting 
blood. If you are breeding for the two-minute pacer you want 



462 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

nothing but the fastest pacing blood. But, possibly you may be 
breeding for size, style, and beauty, and in that case you must be 
particularly careful to have your tabulation full of animals pos- 
sessing these qualifications. In times past many breeders have 
been led to their own hurt in making ill-considered attempts at 
improvement by mating animals of antagonistic instincts. The 
fast runner and the fast trotter have nothing in common between 
them in the way of gait. In physical structure there may be no 
antagonism that we can see, but in mental or psychical structure 
there is nothing but what is inharmonious. Each animal and 
each line of blood must be considered as it stands separate from 
the other, and the question must be not only asked but answered: 
"What has this line of blood done in its own right and by its own 
power?" 

In studying these tabulations it certainly is not necessary tO' 
remind any thinking man of the comparative value of near and 
remote individuals. The first and second generations are the 
important factors in the character and value of the proposed colt, 
and, as a rule, the four grandparents are not given that weight 
in making up a sound judgment to which they are entitled. A 
tabulated pedigree may show a general equality or average good- 
ness all over, in the direction we are looking; although it may 
embrace but few stars it is not a pedigree that should be hastily 
rejected. The student should never lose sight of the truth that 
bad qualities are just as certain to be transmitted as good ones. 
Bad feet, bad limbs, bad eyes and bad respiration should be 
sufficient cause for prompt rejection. Derangement or unhealthi- 
ness of the internal viscera or any of them is just as likely to be 
transmitted as an external malformation or disease. 

In some instances the qualities sought seem to emanate 
entirely from the sire or the dam, and this prepotency seems to 
appear more frequently as the work of the sire than of the dam, 
perhaps because the opportunities are greater in the number of 
services. Thousands of stallions have failed to get trotters out 
of running-bred mares, but as many as you could count on the 
fingers of one hand, probably, have succeeded in a few instances. 
Of these Pilot Jr., Almont and Electioneer occur to me at this 
time as the most prominent. These horses, so far as we know 
the lines of their blood, were strictly trotting and pacing bred, 
with no tincture of running blood in their veins. On a certain 
occasion Senator Stanford wished to demonstrate to the writer 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 4G3 

that Electioneer could get trotters out of running-bred mares, 
and after showing the step of the famous Palo Alto, he remarked: 
"None of my other stallions can do that. Electioneer alone has 
the power to get trotters out of some thoroughbred mares, but 
not all." This ability to get a trotter out of a running mare is 
the highest test to which the prepotency of a trotting sire csm be 
put, as is shown by the very small number that have ever 
succeeded. 

Direct Heredity. — While it is true that all inheritance must 
come through the parents, it is also true that phenomena of form, 
character and quality are not infrequently presented that the 
parents do not seem to possess, and upon looking further we find 
those phenomena in some of the more remote ancestors. When 
we find the character of the offspring a practical reproduction of 
one or both the parents, we designate this as a case of "direct 
heredity" merely for the convenience of description and elucida- 
tion. Ideal or perfect heredity never has been reached and never 
will be. There are two sources to the life of the new being, and 
each of these sources is made up of never-ending variations. 
There may seem to be a very complete coalescence of the elements 
of the sire and dam in the foal, but it is not like either of them 
and yet it may resemble both. A mere physical resemblance to 
a great sire is no evidence that the colt will be equally great. I 
have seen many of the sons of the great Hambletonian, and among 
them all the one that bore the strongest physical resemblance to 
him was of the least value, either as a performer or a progenitor. 
Hambletonian left many great sons behind him, some of them 
even greater than himself, and while they all possessed certain 
family characteristics, I cannot recall a single one that strikingly 
resembled him in his physical conformation. From this inci- 
dent, as well as a thousand other similar ones, we cannot avoid 
the conclusion that heredity controls the whole animal, man or 
beast, in his mental as well as in his physical constitution. 

Cross Heredity is one of the forms of direct heredity, and 
is not very well exemplified in trotting experiences, nor very 
valuable in the lessons it is supposed to teach. In its first form 
it embraces instances where the character of the sire is trans- 
mitted to his daughters and the character of the dam is trans- 
mitted to her sons. Long ago I established a table in the "Year 
Book" to embrace the sires of mares that produced two or more 
animals in the 2:30 list, but had failed to place any representa- 



464 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

tive there from their own loins. The development of this table 
simply showed an array of sires that were not able to get 2:30 
trotters, but when their daughters were bred to liorses of stronger 
inheritance, horses indeed that were able to get trotters from 
almost any kind of mares, they produced foals that came within 
the circle. This was a grandsire's table and depended upon 
second causes, that is, the horses tliat gave it life occupied 
secondary positions in it, and it jDresented but little that was of 
value to the student of horse history. In the discussion of, this 
particular form of heredity the books are filled up with instances 
of vicious fathers begetting vicious daughters and vicious mothers 
producing vicious sons, with more or less uncertainty as to the 
individual origin of the parties in question. 

Indirect and Colla.teral Heredity. — "When a child or a 
colt does not resemble its parents, but "takes after" the grand- 
father or some more remote ancestor, it is said to be a case of 
atavism, or indirect or collateral heredity. Twenty years ago I 
visited, by appointment, a branch of my family at the old home- 
stead of my great-grandfather, on the maternal side. There 
never had been any knowledge of each other or intercourse be- 
tween these two branches of the family. On arriving at my 
destination I was warmly greeted by a gentleman who came for- 
ward from the crowd and named me. As there were a good 
number of people alighting from the train at the same time I 
asked my cousin how he knew me, and he replied that I bore 
such a striking resemblance to my grandfather that at a single 
glance he could have picked me out of a hundred men. This 
grandfather was the father of my mother and he died when I was 
a small boy. But there was a still greater surprise awaiting me. 
My kinsman was an intelligent man of excellent sense, and during 
the few days I spent in his family he was to me a most interest- 
ing study. In a hundred ways he reminded me of my brother, 
not in resemblance of face, for there was, practically, no resem- 
blance; but in the action of his mind, in his way of putting things, 
and especially in his unstudied and peculiar gestures of his hands 
in conversation, the one seemed to be a perfect reproduction of 
the other. They were both born and reared on farms, they were 
botli heads of families, and they were both elders in the Presby- 
terian church. The one was the third and the other the fourth 
remove from their common progenitor. I have read carefully 
descriptions of many cases of mental heredity, but this case, 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 465 

coming under my own observation and deliberate study, seemed 
to be more thoroughly convincing than any or all others. 

The fact that certain qualities may lie dormant through several 
generations and then be unexpectedly developed was well known to 
the ancients more than tsvo thousand years ago. Plutarch mentions 
& Greek woman who gave birth to a negro child and was brought 
to trial for adultery, but it was discovered that she was descended 
in the fourth degree from an Ethiopian. Montaigne expresses 
his astonishment at this, and remarks: 

"Is it not marvelous that this drop of seed from which we are produced 
should bear the impression, not only of the bodily form, but even the thoughts 
a,iid inclinations of our fathers? Where does this drop of water keep its infi- 
nite number of forms? How does it bear these likenesses through a progress 
so iiaphazard and so irregular that the great-grandson shall resemble the great- 
grandfather, the nephew the uncle ? " 

The most prolific and satisfactory sources of evidence in sup- 
port of indirect or reversionary heredity are to be found in the 
crosses between the white and the black races. They abound in 
all quarters wherever the two races are to be found, and many a 
proud family has been humbled to the dust when the long-concealed 
''black drop" makes its unexpected appearance. There are hun- 
dreds of such cases in the world, and it is impossible to make even 
an approximation of the number of generations that would be 
required to wash out the stain. 

Heredity of Influence.— When the subject of "How to Breed 
the Trotting Horse" was in its infancy there Avas a wonderful 
amount of mystery about it. Nobody could understand why one 
horse of the same general conformation should not trot just as 
fast as another. When it was found that this way of looking at 
the problem would not meet the facts, one thought it was owing 
to the length of certain bones, another that it was all in the hind 
quarters, another that it was "the trotting pitch," another that 
it was "a happy nick," etc. When it was all made plain that a 
horse was able to trot fast because his ancestors were able to trot 
fast, the seekers for the mysterious had nothing left that suited 
their taste but the effects of first impregnations, resting on 
Lord Morton's story of the quagga and the mare, which is here 
dignified with the title "Heredity of Influence." Now, just 
how "influence," two or three years after the event, should be- 
come a controlling factor in the paternity of a colt, is a mystery 
sufficiently profound to satisfy our friends of earlier years, so 



466 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

intent upon finding something mysterious. For about three- 
quarters of a century the story, coming from so reputable a 
source, has been cited in many scientific bodies and accepted by 
many scientific men and writers Avithout a question or doubt. 
No writer, so far as I know, has ever attempted to controvert it, 
and if the facts be well founded it demolishes in its conclusions 
all the laws of generation, to say nothing of the universal 
law of heredity. The point to be considered is, whether the first 
impregnation influences the offspring of subsequent and different 
impregnations. In other words, whether the children of a widow 
by her second husband will partake of the characteristics of her 
first husband. Eibot says "that from the psychological point of 
view, we are skeptical in regard to this form of heredity. The 
fact seems to be perfectly out of the order of things." He then 
goes on to consider it as though it might be true, and cites any 
number of the veriest fables in support of it, without ever stop- 
ping to inquire whether they have any foundation of truth. In 
every assemblage of breeders brought together for the purpose 
of discussing how best to breed and rear our domestic animals at 
a profit, there is always somebody to bring in the everlasting 
story of the mare and the quagga, not because it may have any 
relevancy to the subject, but it is an opportunity not to be lost 
to show one's learning. As this story has served the purpose of 
showing off the learning of so many thousands Avho never saw it, 
I will here give it in its original and official form. A communi- 
cation from the Earl of Morton was read before the Eoyal Society 
of London, November 23, 1820, and published in "Philosophical 
Transactions" for 1821, p. 20, and is as follows: 

"I yesterday had an opportunity of observino^ a singular fact in natural 
history, which you may, perhaps, deem not unworthy of being communicated 
to the Royal Society. 

" Some years ago I was desirous of trying the experiment of domesticating 
the quagga, and endeavored to procure some individuals of that species. I 
obtained a male; but being disappointed of a female, I tried to breed from the 
male quagga and a young chestnut mare of seven-eighths Arabian blood, and 
which had never been bred from; the result was the production of a female 
hybrid, now five years old, and bearing both in her form and in her color very 
decided indications of her mixed origin. I subsequently parted with the seven- 
eighths Arabian mare to Sir Gore Ousley, who has bred from her, by a very 
fine black Arabian horse. I yesterday morning examined the produce, namely, 
a two-year-old filly and a year-old colt. They have the character of the Ara- 
bian breed as decidedly as can be expected, where fifteen-sixteenths of the 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 467 

blood are Arabian; and they are fine specimens of that breed; but both in their 
color and in the hair of their manes they have a striking resemblance to the 
quagga. Their color is bay, marked more or less like the qiiagga, in a darker 
tint. Both are distinguished by the dark line along the ridge of the back, the 
dark stripes across the forehand, and the dark bars across the back part of the 
legs. The stripes acioss the forehand of the colt are confined to the withers 
and the part of the neck next to them. Those on the filly cover nearly the 
whole of the neck and the back as far as the flanks. The color of her coat 
on the neck adjoining the mane is pale, and approaching a dun, rendering the 
stripes there more conspicuous than those on the colt. The same pale tint ap- 
pears in a less degree on the rump; and in this circumstance of the dun tint 
also she resembles the quagga. 

"The colt and filly were taken up from grass for my inspection, and owing 
to the present state of their coats I could not ascertain whether they bear any 
indications of spots on the rump, the dark pasterns, or the narrow strips on 
tbe forehead, with which the quagga is marked. They have no appearance of 
the dark lines along the belly or the white tufts on the side of the mane. 
Both their manes are black; that of the filly is short and stiff, and stands up- 
right; and Sir Gore Ousley's stud groom alleged it never was otherwise; that 
of the colt is long, but so stiff as to arch upward, and to hang clear of the 
side of the neck, in which circumstance it resembles that of a hybrid. This is 
the more remarkable, as the mane of the Arabian breed hangs lank and closer 
to the neck than those of most others. The bars across the legs, both of the 
hybrid and of the colt and filly, are more strongly defined and darker than those 
on the legs of the quagga, which are very slightly marked; and though the 
hybrid has several quagga marks which the colt and filly have not, yet the 
most striking, namely, the stripes on the forehand, are fewer and less appar- 
ent tlian those on the colt and filly. These circumstances may appear singu- 
lar, but I think vou will agree with me that they are trifles compared with the 
extraordinary fact of so many striking features which do not belong to the 
dam, being in two successive instances communicated through her to the pro- 
geny not only of another sire, who also had them not, but to a sire probahly 
of another species; for such we have very strong reasons for supposing the 
quagga to be " 

This is Lord Morton's original quagga story without abridge- 
ment, the substance of which has been quoted and printed mil- 
lions of times, but I never have seen anything like an analysis of 
it, either for or against its value as determining any fact or prin- 
ciple in breeding. The elements are: a young chestnut mare, 
"seven-eighths Arabian blood," was bred to a quagga and pro- 
duced a hybrid. She was afterward bred to a black "Arabian" 
and produced a colt and a filly that were supposed to be marked 
like the quagga; hence, first impregnations influence all subse- 
quent foals; and hence "the heredity of influence," as called by 
some scientists. Lord Morton has given an intelligent and, no 



468 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

doubt, faithful description of the colt and the filly that came out 
of the mare that had previously produced the hybrid quagga; but 
lie has failed to show that none of the near-by ancestors of tlie 
sire and dam of this colt and filly were of a dun color and were 
marked just as the colt and filly were marked. Until it is shown 
that the peculiar markings of this colt and filly could not have 
been inherited from their natural ancestors, the half-formed 
theory that they were the result of the coupling with the qnagga, 
years before, wholly fails to satisfy the human understanding. 
When Lord Morton tells us that the dam was seven-eighths, and 
the sire full Arabian, he seems to think he has covered that 
point; but he has not, for he has not shown that there was a sin- 
gle drop of Arabian blood in either of them. It must not be for- 
gotten that at the period here referred to all Eastern and South- 
ern horses were called Arabians, when not one in fifty of them 
ever saw Arabia either through his own eyes or through the eyes 
of any of his ancestors. The composite material out of which 
the English race horse was built up was of all colors, including 
the dun, with the dark stripe on his back, the short stripes or 
patches on his shoulders, and the transverse bars on his legs. 
A horse of this color, I am told, once won the Derby. The 
Kattywar horses of Northwestern India, Mr. Darwin informs us, 
are from fifteen to sixteen hands high, of all colors, with the 
several shades of dun the most common, and when one of them 
fails of having the spinal stripe, the shoulder stripes, and the leg 
stripes the purity of his breeding is doubted. This is the type 
of horse the British officers ride, and when their term of service 
expires sometimes bring home with them. There are many 
duns in Persia and in Eastern Asia Minor, I am informed, and 
the stripes seem to belong to the color. In Norway the color of 
the native horse is dun and the stripes are considered evidence of 
pure breeding. Many of the mountain horses of Spain are duns, 
with the stripes. The dun color prevailed, to a greater or less 
extent, among the native English horses of three hundred years 
ago, and some of them were brought to this country in the early 
colonial period. Mr. Darwin, in his "Animals and Plants under 
Domestication," fully describes the dun horses of Devonshire, and 
in order to be clearly understood he figures one of them showing 
the dark stripes on the shoulder and the transverse bars upon the 
legs. I have seen numbers of dun horses so marked, in this 
country, the most conspicuous that I can now recall being Wapsie, 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 46t> 

the distinguished son of Green's Bashaw. The fact that horses 
of this color and marking are to be found in all parts of the 
globe, has led many thoughtful writers to the conclusion that 
these characteristics are among the very earliest in the history of 
the horse. To bring this instance to a close, I must say: 

1. Beyond the color alone of the sire and dam of this colt and 
filly, there is no evidence whatever that they might not have 
inherited, by ordinary generation, the color and markings from 
some of their ancestors. 

2. The miscegenous breeding of the ass upon the mare has 
been practiced, we know, for more than three thousand years, 
and yet in all that time, and down to our own day and experiences, 
there has been no established indication that the first impregna- 
tion of the filly by the ass had any influence whatever upon her 
subsequent produce by the horse. 

This theory of the first impregnation having an influence on 
all subsequent produce is probably more generally maintained 
among dog fanciers than any other class of breeders. In some 
instances when a valuable maiden bitch gets astray she is. 
banished from the kennel and either destroyed or given away. 
For this foolish notion some antique authority might be cited. 
Burdach, a French writer on physiology, says: 

"If a bitch be once put to a doo- of another race, every litter of puppies 
afterward will include one belonging to tiiat other breed, except the first time 
she be put only to dogs of her own breed." 

This is a kind of pseudo science that is only calculated to mis- 
lead, for the vital facts are omitted. What was the pedigree of 
the bitch? She may have looked like a well-bred pointer and a 
high price may have been paid for her, but her sire may have 
been a mongrel, or, possibly, a miserable cur. No dog breeder 
or dog dealer has ever been known to drown the results of a 
mesalUajice if it was a fairly good-looking puppy. It goes into 
the records as a thoroughbred and finds a market. When a dog 
and a bitch, seeming to be well-bred and costing a high price, 
bring into the world a litter of puppies showing a mixed inherit- 
ance, the fancier at once jumps to the conclusion that there is 
something mysterious about it, and as he has heard of the evil 
results of first impregnations, he thinks he has discovered the 
source of the trouble and straightway this is another example 
resulting from first impregnation. He then goes back on the 



47C THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

dealer, or possibly the breeder, and there to conceal the fact that 
the blood of his kennel was not pure, he would naturally play 
ihe rogue and admit that the young bitch might have got astray. 
This satisfies the unsophisticated owner, and another trick of an 
unscrupulous ''dog jockey" goes on record as a case of "heredity 
•of influence," when in fact it was nothing more nor less than a 
dirty fraud in the breeding of the dog or bitch, or both. 

Some of the early French writers on scientific subjects, as 
Burdach, Michelet, etc., advanced the theory more than a hun- 
dred years ago that the children of a second marriage, in some 
■cases, inherited the resemblance and character of the first hus- 
band. In the nature of things this theory could have but very 
feeble support and that chiefly among scandalmongers. In con- 
nection with this phase of "heredity of influence" I will give a 
little instance of my personal experience. Twenty years ago, or 
more, I was making an address before an association, in a New Eng- 
land city, on the subject of "How to Breed the Trotting Horse." 
The audience was very large and composed exclusively of gentle- 
men. At the opening it was announced that at the close of each 
specific topic an opportunity would be given to any one in the 
audience to ask questions on the thoughts presented. The signal 
had hardly been given when a gentleman arose in the audience 
and raised the question whether I had not omitted an important 
fact in heredity? He then went on to rehearse the everlasting 
quagga story, with a most confident flourish of his learning and a 
sure grasp on a triumph. 

"The quagga story," I remarked, "is well known to everybody, 
but there are some facts about it that are not known to anybody. 
The mare herself may have been from a dun tribe of horses, or 
the horse to which she was afterward bred may have been from 
such a tribe, hundreds of which have stripes on the back, the 
shoulders and the legs, and thus the stripes might be accounted 
for by indirect heredity; not because the quagga had stripes, but 
because the dun horse ancestry had stripes. Most people, proba- 
bly, look upon it as a freak of nature, and as the case has never 
duplicated itself, in all the years before or since, it fails to be a 
practical question, and in our personal experiences as breeders, 
we need not be afraid of suffering harm from it," 

"Your explanation," replied my interlocutor, "fails to cover 
the case, I think, for I have seen, with my own eyes, instances 
of it in the human family and I will relate one. A dozen years 



HOW THE TEOTTING HORSE IS BRED. 471 

ago, or more, a friend of mine married a lady who was a brunette 
in complexion, with black eyes and black hair. He was of florid 
complexion, with blue eyes and sandy hair, jnst about the color 
of my own. After tbree or four years the husband died leaving 
two children of his own complexion and color of eyes and hair. 
In course of time the widow married a man with black hair and 
black eyes, and there came a second set of children that were as 
perfect reproductions of the first husband as his own children 
were in complexion and color of hair." 

''How long have you personally known this family, and have 
yon ever seen these two sets of children?" 

" I have known the family intimately ever since the first mar- 
riage and I have seen both sets of children very often." 

''You certainly have had abundant opportunity to know 
whereof you affirm, and the facts seem so plain that it would be a 
refinement on folly to undertake to contradict them; but there 
is one element in this case that has not been explained, and it is 
a vital one. How are we to know whether some man of 'sandy 
complexion' and with 'hair and eyes just the color of yours,' is 
not the father of this second set of children?" 

This ended th*^ colloquy in a "roof-raising" shout, and I never 
Inave been called upon since, in a public meeting, to even allude 
to the "heredity of influence." With the experiences of thou- 
sands of years of miscegnatious breeding between the ass and the 
mare and no indication among the writers of the ancients as to 
the evil and abiding effects of first impregnations; and with the 
experiences of more than a century in this country, with the 
same results, we are compelled to throw over all claims of this 
kind until furnished with full and complete pedigrees of the sire 
and dam, showing the color and markings of each individual for 
a number of generations. 

Heredity of Acquired Characters and Instincts. — On 
this point there is a lack of unanimity among the promoters of 
the "primordial germ" theory, and the principal advocate of the 
negative side of this question appears to be Professor Weismann. 
Mere opinions of men, no difference how profound their learning, 
cannot be of any value, unless they are sustained by actual ex- 
periences, on questions of this kind. To determine this matter 
we are not dependent upon any of the explanations of the cen- 
tral Darwinian hypothesis of creation without a Creator, for we 
have all around us, safely within the historic period of human 



473 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

observation and experience, mountains of evidence, so to speak,, 
heaped upon us, going to show that ^'acquired character and in- 
stincts" are transmitted and become hereditary. 

Dr. Pritchard, in his "Natural History of Man," gives the 
following illustration on this point: 

"Two other very important observations made by M. Roulin, in 
Soutli America, were pointed out by M. Geoffrey St. Hillaire, in bis report 
to tbe Academy of Sciences. They refer to the fact of the hereditary 
transmission of habits originally impressed with care and art upon the 
ancestors. Of this fact I will adduce other examples in the sequel; at present 
I only advert to M. Koulin's observations. The horses bred on the grazing 
farms of the table-lands of the Cordillera are carefully taught a peculiar pace, 
which is a sort of running amble. This is not their natural mode of progres- 
sion, but they are inured to it very early, and the greatest pains are taken to 
prevent them from moving in any other gait; in this way the acquired habit 
becomes a second nature. It happens occasionally that such horses becoming 
lame, or no longer fit for use, it is then customary to let them loose, if they 
happen to be well grown stallions, into the pasture grounds It is constantly 
ob.served that these horses become the sires of a race to which the ambling 
pace is natural, and which requires no teaching. The fact is so well known 
that such colts have received a particular name; they are termed ' aguilillas.'" 

The fact that there were some pacers in South America came 
to me from many sources, and especially from gentlemen of in- 
telligence and character who had spent years in that country, and 
was for a long time a puzzle to me. All the evidences of history 
went to show that the horse stock of South America was Spanish, 
and no evidence could be found that the Spanish horse was a 
pacer, or that there was any tendency to pace in the blood of the 
Spanish horse. This report to the French Academy of Sciences 
was made in the early part of this century and is really the first 
information I have ever had of Spanish horses pacing. Dr. Pritch- 
ard was one of the earlier modern writers on natural history 
and stands very high as a man of conscience as well as learning. 
The surprising feature in this South American experience is tlie 
wide and, apparently, immediate measure of success that seems 
to have followed the training to the pacing gait in its transmis- 
sion. It may be taken as a rule that the changing of the gait 
from the diagonal to the lateral, or vice versa, is a slow process, 
and it seems to me that with few exceptions it would require 
several generations before the new habit of action would become 
fixed in the breed. It is just possible, however, that there may 



now THE IROTTIJSTG HOUSE IS BRED. 413 

have been a tincture of pacing blood in the Spanish horses of the 
sixteenth century. The Visigoths, one of the early Asiatic hordes 
that overran Europe, first settled in Scandinavia, and the south- 
ern part of Sweden is still called "Gothland." After a long stay 
in that country they became dissatisfied with soil and climate 
and determiued to seek another. According to the historians, 
they first migrated in a southeastward direction and from 
there in a southwestward till they reached the southern part of 
France, from which they soon passed over into Spain, which they 
subdued, and established there a dynasty which lasted two hun- 
dred years. In a.d. 711 the Saracens from Africa crossed over, 
and after a very bloody battle lasting two days, defeated Rhoderic, 
the last of the dynasty, and cut his army to pieces. In Scandina- 
via, and especially in Norway and Sweden, we find plenty of dun 
horses that are pacers, and they are recognized as a very old 
breed. In the mountains of Sjiain we also find small dun horses, 
and it is, perhaps, not an unreasonable possibility that the 
Visigoths may have carried some of their horse stock with them 
in their migration from the North to the South of Europe, and 
thus this habit of action that may have remained for centuries 
latent in the breed may have been unusually plastic in its res- 
toration. This, however, is a mere surmise as to a possibility 
And cannot displace the historic observations reported by M. 
Roulin and presented before the French Academy. The gait of 
the South American pacers, as I understand it, is not that of the 
pure pace, with two strokes completing the revolution, but is 
more like the "saddle gaits" that we find in the West and South- 
west of our own country. The true pace seems to be exceptional, 
because that is not a saddle gait. It is a fact often observed in 
this country that foals from parents trained to the saddle gaits 
will take to those gaits naturally and as soon as they are dropped. 
In a preceding part of this work I have given some consideration 
to the fact that three or four hundred years ago the horses of our 
English ancestors were largely pacers, and to the methods adopted 
in that day for changing the action from the diagonal to the 
lateral gait — the hopples, rattles, weights, etc. The descendants 
of those horses, brought to this country by the colonists, as will 
be seen at another place, were nearly all pacers. 

The following letter, addressed by Dr. William Huggins to 
Charles Darwin and by him published in "Nature" twenty years 
iigo, very strongly illustrates the heredity of instincts, and as it 



474 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

is authentic and true beyond question I will here insert it. Dr. 
Huggins says: ^ 

"I wish to communicate to you a curious case of mental peculiarity. I pos- 
sess an English mastiff, by name Kepler, a son of the celebrated Turk out of 
Venus. I brought the dog, when six weeks old, from the stable in which he 
was born. The first time I took him out he started back in alarm at the first 
butcher's shop he had ever seen. I soon found he had a violent antipathy to 
butchers and butchers' shops. When six months old a servant took him with 
her on an errand. At a short distance before coming to the house she had to 
pass a butcher's shop; the dog threw himself down (being led by a string), 
and neither coaxing nor threats would make him pass the shop. The dog was 
too heavy to be carried, and as a crowd collected, the servant had to return 
with the dog more than a mile, and then go without him. This occurred about 
two years ago. The antipathy still continues, but the dog will pass nearer to 
a shop than he formerly would. About two months ago, in a little book on 
do^s, published by Dean, I discovered that the same strange antipathy is shown 
in the father, Turk. I then wrote to Mr. Nichols, the former owner of Turk, 
to ask him for any information he might have on the point. He replied : " I 
can say that the same antipathy exists in King, the sire of Turk, in Turk, in 
Punch (son of Turk), out of Meg, and in Paris (son of Turk out of Juno). 
Paris has the greatest antipathy, as he would hardly go into a street where a 
butcher's shop is, and would run away after passing it. When a cart with a 
butcher's man came into the place where the dogs were kept, although they 
could not see him, they all were ready to break their chains. A master 
butcher, dresssd privately, called one evening on Paris' master to see the dog. 
He had hardly entered the house before the dog (though shut in) was .'■o much 
excited that he had to be put into a shed, and the butcher was forced to leave 
before seeing the dog. The same dog, at Hastings, made a spring at a gentle- 
man who came into the hotel. The owner caught the dog and apologized, and 
said he never knew him to do so before, except when a butcher came to his 
house. The gentleman at once said that was his business. So you see that 
they inherited these antipathies, and show a great deal of breed." 

Some ancestor, not far removed, of these three generations of 
dogs must have suffered a life of oppression and cruelty at the 
hands of an unfeeling master, and that master must have been a 
butcher. We fail to understand and appreciate the mentality of 
the dog and the horse, and as they are above the average of the 
brute creation we fail of a word midway between instinct and 
reason to express that mentality. We call it "instinct," and cor- 
rectly, too, but this grade of instinct requires a more expressive 
word to represent it. That a feeling of antipathy should have 
been so deeply seated in the nature and life of a dog that the 
resentment and hatred should have been transmitted to his de- 



HOW TUE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 475 

scendants for three generations in succession is a very remarka- 
ble instance of the heredity of instinct. As a companion piece 
to the foregoing and as showing the difference between the 
hatred of one dog and the gratitude and love of another, I will 
relate an instance that came under my own observation and 
knowledge more than forty years ago. General John G. Gordon 
was a merchant in Muscatine, Iowa, and Dr. George Reeder was 
a physician of great skill and very large practice. These two 
gentlemen were among my most intimate personal friends. On 
a certain occasion one of Gordon's well-to-do farmer customers 
brought him a puppy a few months old as a present. He had 
no use for a dog and didn't want one, but he was not willing to 
forfeit either the good wishes or the custom of his farmer 
friend, so he accepted the gift with thanks. When he took the 
puppy home in the evening there was consternation in the house- 
hold, and in a family conference it was decided that he should 
not be allowed to run through the house with his dirty feet, and 
thereupon he was consigned to the cow stable, and that became 
his home as long as he lived. Every night and morning he got 
a liberal ration of milk fresh from the cow and they soon became 
inseparable friends. In cold nights, as if by mutual agreement, 
he always slept cuddled up close to the cow. At that time in 
the history of the town, the country was open and pasture abun- 
dant in every direction, and everybody kept a cow. In the morn- 
ings these cows would start out to their grazing grounds, in 
bands, radiating in every direction, and in the evenings could be 
seen "the lowing herds wind sloAvly o'er the lea." Gordon's 
dog never missed a day for years in going with his friend the 
cow and returning with her in the evening. 

Dr. Reeder used two or three horses in his practice, and his sta- 
ble was on the same alley, and some ten or twelve rods distant from 
Gordon's cow stable. One day in winter time he was having his 
bins filled with corn in the ear, and to make room for it all he 
had to fill up a large dry-goods box that stood in one"corner of 
the »table. While he was supervising the delivery of the corn 
Gordon's dog came in, reared up on his hind legs, seized an ear 
of corn and made off with it. The doctor was very much sur- 
prised at this act of the dog as he never had seen or heard of a 
dog eating corn. While he was thinking about this strange act 
of the dog, he came back again and seized another ear and made 
off with it. This time the doctor watched him, and he carried it 



^IG THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

direct to his friend the coav, dropjaed it before her, and she soon 
made away with it. This phenomenal exhibition of the attachment 
of one animal to another of entirely different nature aroused the 
doctor's desire for a further confirmation of what he had seen. 
Concealing himself behind the door he awaited further develop- 
ments and in a little while the dog came back, seized the third 
ear, and whipping past some other cows, carried it safely to his 
friend. I have seen this dog a hundred times, and he was a 
mongrel nondescript, about the size of the average pointer, with 
nothing remarkable about his appearance; but in all the illustra- 
tions of all the naturalists I have not met with any authenticated 
instance where character in a dumb animal was so beautifully 
■exhibited. In history we have many touching examples of the 
attachment of the dog to his master and of his heroism in de- 
fending the weak against the strong, but this case seems to be 
unique. Here is a character developed that is far more than **the 
sum of inherited habits." We may call it instinct, but that word 
fails to express it. In' whatever light we view this character, it has 
in it an element of re9,son and we have no word that expresses it. 

The oldest written evidence we have of the origin of the setter 
■dog dates back about two hundred years, in which we find John 
Harris agreeing to teach Henry Herbert's "spaniel bitch Quand " 
to set game. Allusions are made in the old writers to dogs used 
for this purpose long before, but the setter certainly has an 
ancestry dating back at least two hundred years. The pointer 
is of much more recent origin and seems to have come from an 
ancestry wholly distinct from that of the setter, and yet, in the 
field, it would be very difficult for the most competent jury to 
decide which stands to his game with the greater steadiness. It 
is agreed, I think, among experienced sportsmen and breeders 
that the best dogs are the result of couplings made in the midst 
of the hunting season when the instincts of the parents are aroused 
and active under the gun. Puppies so bred are already half- 
trained when they are whelped. The instinct to point the game 
instead of rushing upon it is an instinct acquired at an earlier or 
later date, well within the historic period, and we know that it is 
transmitted and inherited under the laws of heredity. We know 
also that this instinct is strengthened and improved by training 
and use; and at the same time it is weakened, if not obliterated, 
by neglect and non-use for a few generations. 

The Scotch collie, with plenty to do, is altogether the most 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 477 

useful, and hence, in a utilitarian sense, the most valuable of all 
the varieties of the canine race. In understanding his master's 
commands and the motions of his hand in the management of the 
flock, he evinces an intelligence, an instinct, that is almost human. 
There is a marked distinction between the instinct of the pointer 
and the collie. The former acts chiefly by his innate mental 
endowments, while the latter is at his best when carrying out the 
will of his master. In both cases the instinct was acquired in 
comparatively recent years, and it is now fixed in the breeds and 
is transmitted with great certainty. 

The most remarkable results in the development and use of an 
instinct that was practically latent, or never developed, are to be 
found in the history of the American Trotting Horse. Fifty-one 
years ago Lady Suffolk was the first trotter to cover the mile in 
3:29^. Four years later Pelham, a converted pacer, trotted in 
2:28, and four years still later Highland Maid, a converted pacer, 
trotted in 2:27. In 1859 Flora Temple trotted in 2:19f ; in 1874 
Goldsmith Maid trotted in 2:14; in 1885 Maud S. trotted in 
2:08|; in 1892 Nancy Hanks trotted in 2:04; and in 1894 AJix 
trotted in 2:03f. But a greater performance than any of these 
was that of the two-year-old colt, Arion, when in 1891 he covered 
the mile in 2:10f. I have no hesitation in pronouncing this the 
greatest perforrnance ever made, to this date, not because it was 
the fastest, as shown by the watch, but because it was made by a 
two-year-old, and from this fact there had been no time for pro- 
longed and skillful training. He was essentially the product of 
heredity and not the result of education. 

Fifty-one years ago there was but one animal in the 2:30 list, 
and at the close of 1896 there were over fifteen thousand within 
that limit and far more than fifteen thousand others hovering on 
its border. This astouTiding result must be attributed primarily 
to a trotting inheritance, but this inheritance has been constantly 
strengthened, reinforced, fortified by the acquired capacities re- 
sulting from the development of the trotting speed of succeeding 
generations. This is not a mere estimate of what has resulted 
from acquired characters and instincts, for if we put all the 
observations of all the writers on subjects of natural history, 
large and small, together, they make but a meager and unsatis- 
factory showing when compared with the fifteen thousand actual 
experiences, officially noted and recorded on the spot and printed 
in "Wallace's Year Book." In all the world there is no other 



478 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

collection of statistics so vast, so accurate and so valuable as is 
there to be found, touching the question we are considering. 

"While the heredity of acquired characters and instincts is thus 
clearly and fully established, there is another truth intimately 
connected with it that should not be forgotten. In an inherit- 
ance springing from recent acquisitions there seems to be less of 
adhesive strength than in one that has come down through many 
generations. This being true, it follows that whether the lines 
of inheritance be long or short there must be an intelligent and 
constant exercise of good judgment in strengthening them 
by bringing the best and strongest together and uniting them in 
the prospective foal. When this has been done it is possible that 
the foal may not be of much value, but the cliances of success 
are in exact proportion to the strength of all the lines of inherit- 
ance that are united in the foal. Beyond the chance of failure 
and beyond the average chance of an average production, there 
is a chance for something better than any of the ancestors. This 
latter hope always has been and always Avill be the inspiration of 
the breeder. In his structure and form he may be an improve- 
ment on his parents, but his value as a trotter can only be de- 
termined by the development of his instincts and speed as a 
trotter. Without such development he may transmit what he 
inherits, but he adds nothing to his inheritance except by the de- 
velopment of his own powers. These accretions, growing out of 
the development of succeeding generations, are the material cause 
that has placed the American Trotter at the very edge of two 
minutes to the mile, and with wise management will eventually 
carry him away beyond that rate of speed. This whole topic 
may be summed up in a single sentence: every acquisition of 
eminence and superiority adds something to the value of what 
is transmitted. 

Heredity of Bad Qualities, Unsoundness, etc. — Under the 
laws of inheritance no distinction can be made between the de- 
sirable and the undesirable, nor between the earlier or later 
acquisitions, as they are all liable to be transmitted and to be- 
come hereditary. The bitter must go with the sweet. Dropping 
below is just as liable to occur as rising above what might be con- 
sidered the average inheritance of the immediate parents. This 
may result from following or throwing back to some undesirable 
or unsound cross that may exist in some of the lines of inherit- 
ance which possibly may be distant several generations. As a 



HOW THE TKOTTJXG HOKSE IS BRED. 479 

practical consideration it makes but little difference whether a 
tendency to, or a fully developed, unsoundness has been in the 
inheritance for generations, or whether it may be the result of 
some recent accident or injury, it is liable to be transmitted. It 
is known to everybody that the great running horse Lexington 
was blind, and it was urged that his blindness Avas not congenital, 
but the result of an accident; hence it was argued by those in- 
terested that it would not be unsafe to breed to him. It was 
stated and repeated a hundred times that while in training he 
got loose in his stable and stuffed himself at the oats bin, and 
without knowing this his trainer took him out next morning and 
ran him a trial of four miles, from the effects of which he lost 
his sight. "Without giving full credence to this as the cause of 
his blindness, it is nevertheless true that he filled the country 
with blind horses. If, for example, a joint or a ligament or a 
muscle of the hind leg be sprained by overexertion or by a mis- 
step, a spavin or a curb may develop, or possibly something still 
worse, and this is a blemish and generally an unsoundness that is 
likely to be transmitted, if not in a developed form, then in an 
unmistakable tendency in that direction, which, in turn, will 
make its appearance in succeeding generations. The horse world, 
and I might say, the whole animal kingdom under domestication, 
abounds in examples, seen and unseen, of unsoundness originat- 
ing in injuries to the parents. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED {Continued). 

Trotting speed first supposed to be an accident — Then, that it came from 
the runner — William Wheelan's views — Test of powers of endurance — 
The term " thorouglibred " much abused — Definition of "thoroughbred" 
— How trotters may be made "thoroughly bred" — How to study pedi 
greesj— Reward offered for the production of a thoroughbred horse that 
was a natural pacer — The trotter more lasting than the runner — The 
dam of Palo Alto — Arion as a two-year-old — Only three stallions have 
been able to get trotters from running-bred mares — " Structural incon- 
gruity " — The pacer and trotter inseparable — How to save the trot and re- 
duce tlie ratio of pacers — Development a necessity — Table proving this 
proposition — The "tin cup" policy a failure — Woodburn at the wrong 
end of the procession. 

Before the question of speed in the trotter began to be con- 
sidered, either from a historical or a philosophical standpoint, or, 
in other words, a question involving scientific truths, there was a 
universal concurrence in the idea that speed at the trot was an 
accident and that there was nothing of inheritance or heredity 
about it. This idea was greatly strengthened by the performances 
of such horses as Boston Horse, Rattler, Edwin Forrest, Dutch- 
man, Confidence, Moscow, Pelham, Flora Temple, Tacony, etc., 
whose origin and blood were wholly unknown, while they were 
on the turf. Contemporaneous with these there were such 
splendid performers as Topgallant, Screwdriver, Lady Suffolk, 
Sally Miller, 0' Biennis and many others that were known to be 
descended from Messenger, a horse that was looked upon by 
everybody as a "thoroughbred." Hence, the conclusion that the 
flying trotter was either an accident in breeding, or his speed 
qualities came from the English running horse. The fact that 
such champion trotters, in their day, as Pelham, Highland Maid, 
etc., had originally been pacers and changed from the lateral to 
the diagonal gait was sedulously concealed from the public, dur- 
ing their day, and only after they had passed away was this bar- 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 481 

sinister in their origin brought to light. Doubtless this same 
fact might have been developed in the origin of Edwin Forrest 
and others, if action had been taken in time. In that day — say 
the first half of this century — it is not remarkable that the 
plebeian origin of some of our most famous early trotters was con- 
cealed, for everybody was claiming a thoroughbred ancestry, and 
the more famous the performer the more certain he was to be 
furnished Avith a thoroughbred pedigree. 

"Whatever is of value in the trotter must come from the run- 
ner, and whatever is of value in the runner must come from the 
Arab," was the view that was universally accepted when I was 
a boy. And yet there were thousands of fast trotters and fast 
pacers in this country long before the first running horse was 
brought from England, and England itself was abundantly sup- 
plied with horses several hundred years before there was a horse 
in Arabia. These two facts are historical, and the dates make 
them incontrovertible. Some forty or fifty years ago AYilliam 
Wheelan, a successful trainer and driver of trotting horses in this 
country, took some trotters over to England, to try his "luck," 
as others had done before him, in making matches and winning 
stakes. He was quite successful, and when he came home he was 
kept busy answering questions about English horses and why 
they did not have more trotters there. He replied that "there were 
plenty of horses that could trot as well or better than our Ameri- 
can horses, if they were trained; they had plenty of blood and 
most of them good limbs and feet, with all the substance that 
was needed." This made William Wheelan an authority, and 
his opinion was quoted all over the land; which went to prove 
that the way to breed the trotter was to get plenty of running 
blood into his veins. About this time the English running horse 
Trustee was bred on a famous trotting mare, Fanny Pullen, a 
daughter of Winthrop Messenger, of Maine, and the produce was 
the gelding Trustee, the first to trot twenty miles within the 
hour, or at least the first to make that distance regularly and to 
rule. This gave a tremendous "boost" to running blood, as 
everybody except Hiram Woodruff ascribed the result to the 
great powers of the imported running horse. All subsequent ex- 
periences fully demonstrated that Hiram Woodruff, although 
alone, was right; for although Trustee's blood commingled more 
k'ndly with trotting blood than most of the other running 
horses, he left no trotters but this one. The highest rate of 



482 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

speed of which this gelding was capable was about 2:40, and at 
last, in a race of mile heats with some fifth-rate old pelter, at 
Cincinnati, Ohio, on a very hot day, he fell exhausted on the 
track and died from the effects of the heat. But the great fame 
of being the only horse able to trot twenty miles within the hour 
did not long remain with this son of imported Trustee. Five 
others have done the same thing, viz.. Captain Magowan, Con- 
troller, John Stewart, Mattie Howiird, and Lady Fulton, all of 
whom went faster than Trustee, except Lady Fulton. 

There have been many crucial tests of the "staying qualities" 
of running blood in the trotter, as against the trotter without 
any running blood, in which the running blood has uniformly 
been worsted. The last of these which I now recall was a match 
for two thousand dollars between Scotland, a half-bred son of 
imported Bonnie Scotland, and Lizzie M., by Thomas Jefferson, 
and out of a pacing mare. The race was two-mile heats, best 
three in five — a very unusual race, and admirably adapted to test 
the staying poAvers of the contestants. Scotland was a fast and 
well-seasoned trotter; while the mare had, probably, a little 
higher flight of speed she never had been tried at such a distance, 
and in her breeding she was short, and had not a single drop of 
running blood in her inheritance. The mare won the first and 
second heats in 4:56-^5:03, and the gelding the third heat in 
4:55^, the fastest in the race, but he was not able to come again, 
and the last heat was Avon by the mare in 4:58|^. This race took place 
at Philadelphia in 1883, and if, at that time, there still remained 
any advocates of "more running blood in the trotter," they have 
not since been in evidence, with two or three addle-pated excep- 
tions. 

In looking back over the many years I have devoted to the litera- 
ture of the horse, and especially to the breeding of the trotting 
horse, I can find no word in the English language that has been 
so much abused as the word "thoroughbred." A minister wrote 
a great, pretentious book on the horse in which he maintained 
that the Morgan horse Avas a "thoroughbred." A lawyer Avrote 
another pretentious book in Avhich he maintained that the trot- 
ting horse Dexter was a "thoroughbred." With these tAVO 
shining lights in the learned professions writing books on the 
horse and pronouncing this family or that individual "thorough- 
bred" without knoAving the meaning of the term, Ave should not 
deal too severely Avith uneducated men for following their exam- 



HOW THE TEOTTIKG HORSE IS BRED. 483 

pie. The minister and the lawyer evidently had always heard 
the term "thoroughbred" applied to what men considered the 
best, and when they were discussing their favorites which they 
considered the best, they naturally called them "thoroughbreds" 
without knowing what they were saying. This was more than 
twenty years ago, and was really the popular conception of the 
meaning of the term at that time. Not one man in a thousand 
then knew that the term had any other meaning than the in- 
dividual superiority of the animal, and that it applied only to the 
pedigree, or concentration of blood in the veins of the animal, 
was quite foreign to the jDopular conception. After the found- 
ing of Wallace's Monthly the light began to dawn on this as well 
as on many other questions, and to-day the true meaning of the 
term is very generally understood. 

To constitute a "thoroughbred". of whatever variety or species 
the animal must possess a certain number of uncontaminated 
crosses of his own breed, and this applies to all kinds of domestic 
animals that are bred for special uses or qualities. There is no 
law determining the number of these uncontaminated crosses, 
except the law of usage. The cattle men, I think, were the first 
to establish a rule on this subject, in this country, and they did 
it on enlightened and scientific jarinciples. It was found in ex- 
perience that the danger of atavism, or throwing back to some 
undesirable ancestor, was diminished in the ratio of the number 
of pure crosses through which the animal was descended. At 
two crosses it was found that there were many reversions to some 
type outside of the breed; at three crosses there were not so 
many; at four there were very few, and at five reversions had 
practically disappeared. While some required another cross the 
majority drove the stake at the fifth generation, proclaiming 
thereby that an animal bred through five uncontaminated gen- 
erations of ancestors was free from the dangers of reversion, and 
hence was "thoroughly bred." This is the formula and this is 
the principle, and it applies with equal propriety to the colt, the' 
calf, the pig, the puppy, the chick, or the birdling. In this;. 
phrase "thoroughly bred" Ave have the origin, reason and mean- 
ing of the term "thoroughbred." The formula of this rule, if 
tabulated, would show two parents: next, four grandparents; 
next eight great-grandparents; next sixteen ancestors and next 
thirty-two, making in all sixty-two ancestors, all of which must 
be "thoroughly bred." This rule of breeding is not limited to 



484 THE HOUSE of amebic a. 

the running horse alone, but applies to all the varieties of our 
domestic animals; and whenever the point is reached at which 
the danger of reversion has been overcome the animal is "thor- 
oughly bred," and the term "thoroughbred" applied just as 
properly to one kind of domestic animal as to another. 

The question here arises as to whether the American Trotting 
Horse can be so thoroughly bred as to be entitled to be ranked as 
a thoroughbred trotter? This question is already affirmatively 
answered when we say the rule "applies to all the varieties of 
our domestic animals." This is the general fact, but the trot- 
ting horse has a qualification, already determined, that serves as 
a fixed starting point in giving him rank. The standard as 
originally adopted and honestly administered Avas the mighty 
engine that wrought the revolution in breeding the trotter. 
It fixed a certain qualification that had to be complied with be- 
fore an animal could be admitted to standard rank, and tliat 
qualification was in brief to either perform or produce a per- 
former that could cover a mile in 2:30. It excluded no strains 
of blood, but it admitted the animals only that had fully demon- 
strated the ability to trot or to produce trotters. The standard 
is now antiquated, and far behind the speed of the trotters, which 
is a clear demonstration of the wisdom of its construction and 
adoption, but to this topic I will refer at another place more at 
length. With the standard, then, and the unmistakable evidence 
it furnished of the possession of what we Avill call "trotting 
.blood," we have a more definite and satisfactory starting point 
than can be claimed for any kind or variety of domestic animal. 
With this demonstrated ability to trot fully established, we can 
commence to count the generations of standard animals in a trot- 
ting pedigree, and if we find five generations of ancestors, with 
every animal standard bred, Ave can safely and intelligently say 
the animal is "thoroughly bred" as a trotting horse. With these 
sixty-two progenitors all legally established as standard animals, 
who will say this is not a thoroughbred trotting horse? He is not 
only thoroughbred, but he is more distinctly and completely 
thoroughbred than any other domestic animal, because the fifth 
generation of his ancestors, and the fourth and the third and the 
second and the first have all proved that they are either trotters 
or the producers of trotters. No other breed has ever been 
established on so good a foundation, for they have fairly won 
their initial honors by what they have done. But this is one 



HOW THE TROTTING HOUSE IS BRED. 485 

degree higher and embraces one generation more than the for- 
mula usually prescribed as necessary to constitute the rank of 
thoroughbred. Five "generations of ancestors" do not include 
the representative product of those generations. The product 
would be the sixth generation, which is one more than the gen- 
erally accepted usage requires. An animal representing five 
generations of standard trotting blood, complete and without 
contamination, is "thoroughly bred" and is justly entitled to be 
classified as a "thoroughbred trotting horse." At this point of 
breeding it is considered that the danger of reversion is practi- 
cally eliminated, and hence this distinctive classification. At the 
time of this Avriting (1897) there should be, in this country, quite 
a number of youngsters fully entitled to rank as thoroughbreds. 

All intelligent breeders have long been aiming at this point, 
not merely for the name "thoroughbred," but for the greater 
certainty of uniformity in producing what they want — the 
ability to perform; and the quality of these thoroughbred trotters 
must be determined by the ability to perform and the quality of 
each and every one of the ancestors. If each and every one of 
the four or five generations of ancestors was able to go out and 
win himself or herself, there could hardly be a doubt that the 
colt could do the same, but some of those ancestors may be in the 
standard merely from reflected honors, which are good, but not 
a crucial test of superiority in the individual. There is nothing 
like the animal that "has gone out and done it" himself, over 
and over again, and when we sit down to the study and compari- 
son of pedigrees in the thoroughbred rank we find great differ- 
ences in the quality of the lines of descent. The reflected honors 
of an uncle or an aunt are of much less value than the honor of 
a direct ancestor. Whiler the blood of all the ancestors is tested 
blood, the individuals may not all have been tested, and hence 
are less certain in transmitting the true trotting instinct. While 
the standard has done wonders in teaching the true art of breed- 
ing, like all other human devices it has its imperfections. Jnst 
like the runner, the trotter may be strictly thoroughbred, and 
yet in taking after some of the imperfections of one or more of 
his ancestors, he may be of but little value as a performer. This 
truth has been verifled in a thousand experiences in the runner, and 
it is just as liable to be verified in the trotter. Hence the supreme 
importance of looking well to the qualities and capacities of 
every animal in the inheritance. 



486 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

At the very inception of the idea that the trotting horse could 
be bred and developed into a breed, an opinion prevailed every- 
where that it conld not be done. The theory that speed at the 
trot came from speed at the gallop was universally held and 
advocated. In 18G8 I made a tour among the breeders and 
horsemen of Tennessee and Kentucky, for the purpose of gather- 
ing information about both runners and trotters. Those States 
were then beginning to pull themselves together after the war. 
At General Harding's, among others, I was shown a large, heavy- 
boned colt, and the General remarked that if he did not make a. 
race horse he would make a capital stallion to take to the West 
and breed on trotting mares. At Balie Peyton's I was shown a 
great big, coarse horse that had run some races and won in very 
slow time, and that was unsound at many points. lie was over 
sixteen hands high, and had very bad limbs. Mr; Peyton re- 
marked that ''he was too big for a race horse, but he would do 
well in the West as a trotting sire." This was the remark every- 
where as applied to big colts that couldn't run. About the same 
time Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, then in the employ of a sport- 
ing paper in New York, as an editorial writer, expressed his 
sorrow that Hambletonian did not have a thoroughbred cross, 
close up, and his opinion that such a cross Avould have made him 
a much greater sire. Thus, East and West, North and South, the 
opinion prevailed everywhere that the v/ay to breed the trotter was 
to go to the runner. This universal belief, wholly without founda- 
tion, soon generated the cry, "more running blood in the trotter," 
and the instincts of all the rogues in the country were quickened to 
make their pedigrees conform to the popular belief of what was best. 
This resulted in a period of fictitious claims, for when a man had a 
colt out of a mare of unknown breeding the rule was to say, "dam 
thoroughbred," and if the owner was unusually conscientious 
and knew the breeding for one or two crosses, he would give them 
correctly, but seldom failed to tack on two or three thoroughbred 
crosses that were wholly fictitious. After all my years of experi- 
ence with the pedigrees of horses, it is my deliberate and candid 
opinion that no word in the English langwage has been so much 
abused as the word "thoroughbred." It has been the medium 
of more deceptions and downright falsehoods than any other 
word in the vocabulary. For many years it was the word above 
all other words that the unscrupulous jockey employed to defraud 
his inexperienced victim. And if tl:ere had been no strong hand 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 487 

to take the improper and dishonest use of the word by the throat 
there would be no breed of trotters, and the whole business of 
breeding and developing the trotting horse would be to-day just 
where it was thirty years ago. The old, threadbare stock argu- 
ment was in everybody's mouth, to the effect that ''Messenger 
was an English thoroughbred and he founded a family of trotters, 
hence any other English thoroughbred could do the same thing 
under the same circumstances." When this ancient formula 
was submitted to the test it was found to be fatally unsound at 
both ends, as has been shown in another chapter. Messenger 
was found to be far short of being thoroughbred in his inherit- 
ance; forty other English thoroughbreds had been in competition 
with him and bred upon the same mares, yet no other English 
thoroughbred, in the experiences of a hundred and fifty years, 
ever founded a family of trotters. The two ablest advocates of 
"more running blood in the trotter" that this country has pro- 
duced, Mr. Charles J. Foster and Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, when 
challenged to produce an English thoroughbred horse that had 
founded a family of trotters, conceded the whole contention by 
naming Bishop's Hambletonian and Mambrino, both sons of 
Messenger and the principal channels through which Messenger 
had founded his family of trotters. This knocked all the noise 
out of the famous formula, and instead of the braying of an ass 
we have heard nothing since on this subject but an occasional 
and very feeble squeak of a mouse. 

In the earlier portion of the period when the American Trotter 
was beginning to assume the shape and character of a breed, the 
term "thoroughbred," meaning English racing blood, was ad- 
hered to with astonishing tenacity, as an indispensable element 
in the breeding of the trotter. A few men of clear and independ- 
ent minds commenced to study the question in the light of ex- 
periences, and they were not long in reaching the truth; but, as a 
rule, the less a man knew of the question, whether a breeder or 
a writer, the more blatant and vocifei'ous he was in maintaining 
that all trotters were dependent for their speed on the blood of 
the "thoroughbred English race horse." When Maud S. made 
her four-year-old record and astonished the world, the acclama- 
tions of this class went up in tremendous volume pointing to the 
Boston blood of her grandam as the element that did it. Now, 
it never has been shown, and it never can be shown, that there 
was a single drop of Boston's blood in her veins. Besides all 



488 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

this, Boston was not a thoroughbred horse, for neither his sire 
nor his grandam was thoroughbred. A curious phase of the in- 
terest attached to the mere word "thoroughbred" was brought 
out by a Catholic priest, in New Jersey, in a very cranky and 
ill-natured letter addressed to the editor of Wallace's Monthly 
protesting against the frequent use of the term '"running-bred" 
instead of "thoroughbred." Priests are generally educated men, 
but this poor man struck out into a field where he was entirely ig- 
norant. A horse with two or three immediate and direct running 
crosses may be properly and truthfully called "running bred," 
because that blood predominates in his veins, but to be justly 
and truthfully called "thoroughly bred" he must have at least 
five direct and distinct crosses, and each and every one of them 
pure and without any contamination from any other blood. As 
an illustration of what results from this definition of the word 
"thoroughbred," we may take the very cream of our old Ameri- 
can racing families and not one in fifty is "thoroughly bred." 
American Eclipse was far short of being thoroughbred, even if 
we admit that Messenger was thoroughbred. Timoleon, the 
greatest son of Sir Archy, had an impossible and untruthful 
pedigree on the side of his dam. His great son Boston was short 
and deficient on both sides, and with these taints how could he 
get the great blind horse Lexington and make him a thorough- 
bred? These horses were distinctively "running bred," but not 
technically "thoroughbred." It is not to be presumed the priest 
was angry because I preferred not to use a word that conveyed 
an untruth and to use one that told the exact truth, for he was 
not qualified to judge which was true and which was not true, 
but like hundreds of others he feared the value of his property 
might be affected by the refusal to apply the term "thorough- 
bred" to some supposable cross in some of his pedigrees. 

"More running blood in the trotter" was a "fad" that has 
been completely extinguishedby all the experiences of later years. 
It was a freak that never had any foundation either in nature or 
in reason. No animal can transmit to his posterity qualities and 
capacities which he has not inherited, or which he does not 
possess by acquirement. This is a rule which seems to be per- 
fectly plain to the comprehension of everybody, and in observa- 
tion and experience it proves itself true every day of the year. 
To breed a horse that can go fast at the trotting or pacing gait 
we must go to the horse and the blood that has gone fast at one or 



HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 489 

the other of these gaits. It seems like a needless work to 
expend an}' time or space on what is self-evident in all human ex- 
periences. A few years ago I offered a money reward, of sufficient 
amount to justify some labor in a search, to any one who would 
report to me any thoroughbred running horse, with the proofs, 
that had ever made a trotting record of a mile in three minutes, 
and there was no response. Some years later I renewed the 
offer, doubling the amount of the former offer, and still there 
came no response. I regret now that I did not make the offer 
for a mile in four minutes instead of three, for I very much 
doubt whether there ever was a thoroughbred horse able to trot 
a mile in four minutes. What is the use, then, of giving further 
attention to the consideration of the value of thoroughbred run- 
ning blood in the trotter? 

But after conceding that the instinct to stick to the trot and 
the step of the trotter must come from the trotter, the advocates 
of "more running blood in the trotter" plant all their heavy 
guns on the proposition that running blood is needed to give the 
trotter more courage, endurance, and heauty of form. In all 
the past years we have had so many grand panegyrics on the will 
power and undying courage of the "courser of the desert" that 
they have become threadbare and have an "ancient and fish-like 
smell," and we would prefer to exchange them for something 
more recent and practical. When we go to a race meeting and 
see so many contests at various distances less than a mile, a few at 
something over a mile, and all these merely single dashes, we 
naturally and justly conclude that the distance of ground to be 
covered in each contest is adjusted to the courage and stamina 
of the racers. I cannot conceive of any fairer criterion by which 
to determine the measure of gameness and pluck of running 
horses than simply to consider the distance chosen, and that for a 
single dash. Trainers and owners know just where each horse will 
quit, if hard pressed, and they will not enter him in any distance 
beyond the point where they know his courage will fail. "With 
the data of distances for these single dashes already fixed for 
the accommodation of horses with different degrees of staying 
qualities, and after making a liberal allowance for age and lack 
of condition, we seem to have a solid foundation for a safe con- 
clusion that the crucial test of the speed of the average race 
horse fails him before he reaches the first mile-post. 

When the trotter starts out for his summer's campaign he has no 



490 THE HORSE or AMERICA. 

choice as to the length of his races, and he is not looking about for 
single dashes of four, five, six or seven furlongs, but enters the field 
boldly and throws down the glove to all the best strains of trot- 
ting and pacing blood. Every race will be mile heats, best two 
in tliree or three in five, and it often requires six, seven or eight 
heats before the victor is declared. This experience is repeated, 
week after week, during the whole season. Such a weekly ex- 
perience as this, continued through twenty consecutive weeks, 
would probably destroy the best and stoutest running horse now 
living. This is the test to which the trotter is subjected, and 
no man can say it lacks in severity in determining his qualities 
as a race horse, in his stamina, his courage and his gameness. 
In touching this point I will here take the liberty of entering my 
protest against what I consider the unnecessary severity of this 
test. We want all these tests, and from the standpoint of the 
breeder we cannot progress without them, but we want them to 
stop short of injury to the animal. When a contest is drawn out 
to six, eight or ten heats, it not only becomes cruel as a sport, 
but it is liable to inflict irreparable injury to the soundness of 
the animal. Unsoundness, either external or internal, is liable to 
result from all such abuses. This is a dominant fact, and while 
we may not be able to see the injury with the eye, we are likely 
to see the evil results in the progeny. Animals of the kind most 
likely to be subjected to this over-severity of test are the hope 
of the future as producers, and by all means wise and j)ossible we 
should seek to preserve them in their pristine soundness and 
vigor. As breeders we cannot afford to let them go without 
development and test, neither can we afford to impair or destroy 
their producing qualities, in the test. This can be done only by 
shortening the race; not the distance of ground, but the number 
of heats that can be trotted. With an inflexible rule that not 
more than five heats should be trotted in any race, and that at 
the conclusion of the fifth heat the money should be divided ac- 
cording to th3 places of the contestants, I would not be particular 
as to v/hether the race was for the best two in three, or the best 
three in five. The invariable results have been that in long- 
drawn-out contests of many heats there have been bargains and 
combinations for or against certain horses, and all managed by 
and in the interest of the so-called "speculators." If this were 
done the combinations of the gamblers would be checkmated, 
the cruelty of the sport would be eliminated, and our best horses 



HOAV THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 491 

would come through the campaigns ready and fit to propagate 
their species. 

In breeding for a particular j)urpose or qualification all experi- 
ence goes to show that the elements entering into the new crea- 
ture must he carefully selected as jjossessing the quality that we 
seek to propagate. Nobody would think of breeding a running 
mare to a trotting horse if he was seeking to breed a running 
colt. No thoughtful and intelligent man would think of breed- 
ing a running horse upon a trotting mare if he were seeking to 
breed a trotting colt. The runner to the runner and the trotter 
to the trotter has been demonstrated ten thousand times as the 
right way. The cross-bred or half-and-half-bred animal may be 
something of a trotter or something of a runner, doing neither 
well; and this uncertainty never can become a certainty as to 
which it may be till you try him. The evil of half-and-half 
breeding does not cease with the life of the animal, for the divi- 
sion in his own inheritance will manifest itself in his progeny for 
generations, or till it is bred out. But, strange as it may seem, 
there are still a few old men living who, from pride of opinion ad- 
vanced in their younger days, still maintain that trotting speed 
mustcome from the "thoroughbred" and "point with pride" to the 
great horse Palo Alto as the complete illustration of their belief. 
In relation to the breeding of Palo Alto I will here tell a little 
story, premising that I neither accept it as true nor reject it as 
false, for I know nothing about it. The late Mr. AVilliam II. 
Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, was in many respects a remark- 
able man. He was full of energy and push, and his brain seemed 
to teem with formidable ideas, chiefly relating to his prospects, 
and the management of his own business. He was intelligent in 
horse matters, and very well informed on local horse history. He 
did a great deal of work for me in the way of straightening out 
tangled skeins, and in tracing obscure pedigrees. In this way I 
came to know Mr. Wilson very well, and as I never found him 
wrong on these questions I came to place great confidence in his 
word and his judgment in all pedigree matters that he had in- 
vestigated. Some time about 1889, probably, he asked me to in- 
vestigate the pedigree of Dame Winnie, the dam of Palo Alto, 
for, he said, he had every reason to believe she was not by Planet, 
but by a trotting-bred horse that he named, but that name has 
escaped me. I replied that I had not time then, but I would 
think about it. Some months afterward he was again in my 



492 THE HORSE OP AMERICA. 

office and he again urged the investigation. My reply was that 
there were some very upright and honest men in Kentucky as 
well as some great rogues, and if I were to undertake to investi- 
gate this pedigree the rogues could get forty men, if so many 
were necessary, for a bottle of whisky or a half-dollar a head, 
who could remember just what it was necessary to remember, 
and forget just what it was necessary to forget in order to prove 
that the mare was by Planet. I recalled my experience with 
suborned evidence in the past, and knew just what I might, 
expect in the future, and so I had concluded to make no more 
investigations in certain portions of Kentucky until I had an 
opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses. Dame Winnie was 
a plain, common-looking mare, with nothing about her to indi- 
cate high breeding, and if we lay aside Mr. Wilson's story and 
accept the pedigree as usually given she was strongly running 
bred, but at several points in her pedigree she fails of being thor- 
oughbred. The internal evidence as to the breeding of this 
mare, brought to light in the performance of her produce, sug- 
gests very strongly the probability that she possessed some trot- 
ting blood, from some source not far removed. She has five 
representatives in the 2:30 list, and this of itself strongly supports 
Mr. W^ilson's untold story, that I would not listen to. In passing 
I will say I would be glad to listen to it now; for this solid 
foundation of experience is so stoutly corroborative of what he 
suggested as to justify an effort to reach the exact truth. When 
it was known in Kentucky that Senator Stanford had sent his 
representative down there to gather up a lot of "thoroughbred" 
mares from which to breed trotters in California, every dealer in 
the State had just what he wanted. He was looking for pedi- 
grees, and it was a very easy matter to shape up the pedigrees 
just to suit him. 

Whatever may have been the breeding of his dam, Palo Alto 
was a great horse, but he came to his speed slowly, and this 
would seem to indicate that if his dam had any trotting inherit- 
ance it was weak in the direction of attaining a high rate of 
sneed. From the day he was weaned till the day he died he was 
Senator Stanford's idol, and with this horse as an object lesson 
he was going to teach the world how to breed the trotter. At 
two years old he was driven a mile privately in 2:22|, and his 
owner, feeling that his dream was realized in breeding the great- 
est horse the world had produced, named him "Palo Alto," as 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 493 

he deemed him worthy of being at the head of the greatest breed- 
ing establishment of the world. He was in the hands of the 
most skillful and careful of all trainers, and the training went 
on without respite, year after year. When four years old he 
went through the Eastern circuits, winning the larger share of 
his purses, and making a record of 2:20^. Now let us consider 
for a moment whether the Senator did not make a great mistake 
and select the wrong horse as the typical representative of his 
great establishment. In 1888 he bred a colt by Electioneer out 
of Lula "Wilkes, grandam the famous trotting mare Lula, 2:15, 
by Norman, etc., intensely trotting bred, and when he was three 
years old he made a record of 2:16. This is better than 2:20^ as 
a four-year-old, for this fellow had not to take one-half the train- 
ing that Palo Alto was subjected to. The next year he bred another 
colt by Electioneer called Arion, out of a mare by Nutwood; she 
out of a sister to Voltaire, 2 :20i, by Tattler, 2:26; and she out of 
the famous trotting brood mare Young Portia, by Mambrino 
Chief; and the next dam Portia by the pacer Eoebuck. 
This colt came out and trotted a mile in 2:10| as a tAvo-year-old. 
The four-year-old had a great "boom" and was considered by 
many as the phenomenal colt of his year, but when we place his 
record of 2:20^ beside the 2:16 of the three-year-old, it looks 
very sickly, and when we comjiare it with the 2:10f of the two- 
year-old it is shaded into a deathly pallor. The four-year-old is 
largely the result of skill and art; the two-year-old is the result 
of nature. Arion is the best horse, by the record, that the world 
has ever produced, and the Senator was mistaken in his dream. 
We must judge of the value of a fast performance by the degree 
of naturalness which it represents and the measure of its freedom 
from the arts of the trainer. The "born trotter" is what we 
want, and at two years old Arion, or any other colt, was at the 
right age to determine whether a fast performance was the result 
of nature or of art. 

It is a fact well known to everybody that some trotting-bred 
stallions have shown greater power in controlling the action of 
their progeny than others that seemed to be equally well bred. 
If out of the great mass of stallions, past and present, that have 
been more or less successful as trotting progenitors, we jsick out 
thirty of the very best, as shown by their progeny, it will proba- 
bly surprise many of my readers to learn that only three of that 
number have been able to triumph in the supreme test of getting 



494 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

trotters out of running-bred mares. Of these three Electioneer 
stands first, Almont second, and Pilot Jr. third. After mak- 
ing all allowance for the anxiety of certain Californians and cer- 
tain Kentuckians to prove the need of "more running blood in 
the trotter," and their manifest willingness to help along with 
pedigrees in that direction, I am fully convinced that these three 
horses, in some cases, were able to meet and overcome the hostile 
elements of the galloper. Not in every case, certainly, nor in a 
majority of cases. When Senator Stanford was showing me the 
step of Palo Alto, on his own track, as a three-year-old, I re- 
marked, "Well, Electioneer certainly triumphed in that case," 
and the Senator replied, "Yes, but none of my other stallions 
can do it, and there are some thoroughbred mares upon which 
Electioneer can't do it." W'hen approached by others on this 
subject in the riper years of his experience, he was in the habit 
of replying: "There are thoroughbreds and thoroughbreds; some 
of them will produce trotters to Electioneer, and some will not." 
He accepted everything as thoroughbred that had been bought 
by his agents as thoroughbred, whether in Kentucky or Cali- 
fornia, and he claimed to be able to pick out those that would 
produce trotters by their appearance. When pressed to give the 
characteristics by which he was able to make his selections, he 
spoke of the shape of the animal, in a general way, and especially 
by the head and the expression of countenance. In selecting his 
mares to put in the trotting stud by their "appearance" he 
would naturally select such as had the "appearance" of trot- 
ters, and as he personally knew no more about their pedigrees or 
the inheritance of the animals than the mares knew themselves, 
he was very liable to be deceived in the breeding of the animals 
as he selected them. In selecting a mare by "appearance" as 
indicating that she might throw trotters to Electioneer, there is 
a strong suggestion that this "appearance" may have been a 
legitimate "inheritance" sought to be covered up by that sadly 
abused term "thoroughbred." Whether this suggestion ever 
entered the Senator's mind I have no means of determining. 
But whether some of the mares called "thoroughbred" had really 
a mixed inheritance or not, the fact remains that the three horses 
named above did succeed in getting some trotters from mares 
that were strongly running bred. Then the question arises: Why 
did these three horses succeed where all others failed? We are 
not able to give an answer to this question that is complete and 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 495 

irrefutable, for there is so much in the laws of generation that 
we do not and cannot know. Take two brothers, for example, 
and one is a great success and the other a great failure, and 
often the failure is the better formed and the better looking 
horse of the two. All that science teaches us here is that one 
took after some ancestor, near or remote, that was good, and the 
other after some ancestor that was not good. Electioneer, Al- 
mont and Pilot Jr. all had short pedigrees composed exclusively 
of trotting and pacing blood, except possibly a few drops of run- 
ning blood that may have trickled down from the runner through 
trotting or pacing channels. Their instincts to stick to the trot 
had been encouraged and more or less completely developed. 
Electioneer and Almont both had pacing blood some distance 
away, and Pilot Jr., so far as we know, had nothing but j^acing 
blood, and yet he never paced a step in his life. This embraces 
all we know of the three horses that proved themselves the most 
prepotent in overcoming all antagonisms of race or blood. Others 
equally great, no doubt, have come up since their day, but as 
breeding is now better understood and as the laws of nature are 
now more carefully followed, tests of this kind are not often 
made. 

After all the "wiring in and wiring out" of the tortuous advo- 
cates of "more running blood in the trotter" had found that 
their efforts had borne no fruit and that all intelligent breeders 
had left their theories away behind, a remarkably brilliant genius 
struck out a new line of thought and argument, which unfor- 
tunately died "abornin' " just as the attention of all intelligent 
breeders was turning away from "more running blood in the 
trotter" as a senseless "fad," and looking to the pacer as a possi- 
ble source of increased trotting speed. In formulating and ex- 
ploiting his idea, our genius seems to have reasoned after this 
manner: "The crisis is here, the breeders are all turning away 
from the thoroughbred as a source of trotting speed and consid- 
ering the pacer, and now if I can convince them that the pacer is 
at least half-thoroughbred I Avill beat the standard and win the 
day." Here we have the motive and the subject, and now we are 
ready for the manipulation. In due time the article appeared, 
and I must do the writer the justice of saying I never have been 
fully satisfied that he believed a single word of it himself. He 
starts out to show that the pace is not the result of hereditary 
transmission but the result of "structural incongruity." He 



496 THE HORSE OF AMEKICA. 

declared that this "structural incongruity" is the result of 
breeding the thoroughbred horse on the slab-sided, ill-shapen 
mares of the West and Southwest. From the inheritance, part 
of the animal is structurally formed to run and the other part 
structurally formed to trot, and between the two a compromise 
is made on the pace. In this "structural incongruity," between 
the two parts the pacing gait originated, and hence whatever 
speed the pacer may possess comes from the "thoroughbred;" 
and, therefore, of necessity, whatever speed the trotter gets from 
the pacer comes from the "thoroughbred." There are many 
humbugs in the literature of the horse, but this is the craziest 
humbug I have ever met with. What a pity he left his work un- 
finished, and failed to tell us which end of the horse was running 
bred and which end trotting bred, so that we might locate the 
"incongruity" and cut it out! But to look at this "structural 
incongruity" seriously, it lacks but little of a scandal on the in- 
telligence and honesty of American writers on the horse. Here is 
a gentleman of reputed intelligence, who wields a facile pen and 
has been writing on breeding subjects for about thirty years, and 
much of his work was well done; and now at the close of the 
nineteenth century he undertakes to tell us how the pacer orig- 
inated in this country. The veriest tyro in horse history knoAvs 
that pacers abounded in England in the twelfth century, and 
indeed long before that. Every colony in this country Avas full 
of pacers a hundred years before the first thoroughbred crossed 
the Atlantic. But wild and absurd theories can safely be left to 
the public judgment. 

It required several years of labor and iteration to convince the 
breeding public that the trot and the pace were simply two forms 
of one and the same gait. When first advanced it was received 
by the more intelligent breeders as an abstraction that had noth- 
ing practical in it, while those of less ability to think for them- 
selves only laughed at it. Since then the inevitable processes of 
experience have demonstrated its truth, and the question of to- 
day is how to separate these two forms of the same gait and to 
breed either form, as we may desire, as a distinct and certainly 
transmissible gait. With a few it will still remain a matter of 
indifference whether the colt comes a pacer or a trotter, but with 
the great mass of breeders the question of profit in breeding the 
harness horse must be considered. Everybody knows that in the 
market for road Jiorses the clean-stepping trotter is worth more 



EOW THE TROTTING HOESE IS BRED. 497 

than the smooth-gliding pacer. This is not a question to be de- 
termined by fashion, but a fact of universal experience that the 
trotting action is better suited to harness and the pacing action 
better suited to the saddle. Fashions may change, but these two 
facts are unchangeable, for they are founded in the nature and 
mechanism of the two forms of action. The difficulties in the 
way of separating the diagonal from the lateral form of the trot 
are very great, and there is no use or wisdom in attempting to 
blink this fact. Speed at both forms of the gait comes from the 
same source, the same blood, the same inheritance; and source, 
blood and inheritance, in a breeding sense, are the hardest things 
in nature to overcome. So far as experience teaches there is but 
one method or treatment that has ever been successful in wiping 
out the pacer. In the first half of the seventeenth century Eng- 
land was full of pacers, and about a hundred years later she did 
not have one. The trouble about this remedy is that the trotters 
were wiped out also, and to-day England has neither a pacer nor 
a trotter. When she now wants a trotter she has to send to this 
country and get some of the blood of the little despised pacer 
that was shipped from her own shores in the early colonial days. 
The blood of the Saracenic horse has not lost its potency as a 
pacing expunger, as shown by modern experiments, and all our 
breeders have to do is to use it in copious effusions, and we will 
soon be rid of the pacer, and the trotter along with him. The 
pacer and the trotter are never found separate from each other, 
so far as my information goes. In Russia they breed trotters 
methodically, and they have a full supply of very fast pacers 
that are used as shaft horses in their droskies. As in the past, 
so in the future, we never need expect to see the two forms of 
the gait entirely separated. 

Our people, however, are not ready, and as long as the horse is 
used for business and pleasure never will be ready to dispense 
with the trotter; and even though some considerable number 
might deplore the presence and prominence of the pacer, every one 
of them would welcome him with great joy if they knew he was 
a necessary adjunct of the trotter. When we consider the 
problem of reducing the ratio of pacers and increasing the ratio 
of trotters in what we produce, there is so much that is old and 
still imperfectly known in what we incorrectly call our "earlier" 
period of trotting that we find nothing encouraging in the 
study. The origin of the principal trotters of the early part of 



498 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

this century, except the direct descendants of Messenger, was so 
sedulously concealed that it was entirely natural for so many 
men to conclude that the trotter was not bred, but made by the 
trainer. When Flora Temple was the queen nobody knew that 
her speed came from a pacer. Old Kentucky Hunter was a very 
fast pacer. When Pelham was king nobody knew he had been 
a pacer. When Highland Maid eclipsed all records nobody knew 
she was pacing bred and had been a pacer herself. When Ver- 
mont Black Hawk was the most popular sire of his day nobody 
knew that his dam was ''Old Narragansetfc," apacer. When Ethan 
Allen stood at the head of all young trotters the old grey mare, 
his dam, was, and still remains, entirely unknown, but everybody 
believes that a large share of his speed came from that mare. 
Andrew Jackson, the head of the great Clay family, was out of a 
fast pacing mare. And thus we might extend the list indefinitely. 
But away back, more than a hundred years before the period of 
which Ave are here speaking, pacing and trotting races had be- 
come so numerous that they had to be suppressed by legislative 
enactment. More than two hundred years ago there were pac- 
ing races and trotting races in this country, and then as now it 
seems evident that the form of the action of the prospective colt, 
whether lateral or diagonal, was uncertain until it appeared. 
This condition of uncertainty about the secrets of the womb has 
existed for centuries, as it exists to-day; and if we wsre furnished 
a complete list of all the great trotters of the last two decades 
that were born jjacers we would hardly be willing to believe our 
own senses. The following short list of such animals as have 
gone fast at both forms of the gait will serve to illustrate the 
oneness of the two forms: 

Pacing. Trotting. 

Jay-Eye-See, bl. g. by Dictator 2:06J 2:10 

Direct, bl. b. by Director 2:05^ 2:18i 

Monbars, b. b. by Eagle Bird 2:16f 2:llf 

George St. Clair, b. h. by Betterton 2:10^ 2:15^ 

Heir-at-Law, bl. h. by Mambrino King 2:07^ 2:12 

Ottinger, br. g. by Dor-sey's Nepbew 2:1H 2:09f 

Bert Oliver, b. li. by Asbland Wilkes 2:08| 2:19i 

VaKsar, gr. b. by Vatican 2:07 2:21f 

Pilgrim, br. h. by Acolyte 2:10* 2:20| 

San Pedro, bl. g. by Del Sur 2:10f 2:14^ 

Wardwell, b. g. by Almont Jr 2:16^ 2:14^ 

Gazette, b. h. by Onward 2:09t 2:23f 

Welcome, b. b. by Artbur Wilkes 2:10^ 2:27^ 



HOW THE TEOTTING HOESE IS BRED. 499' 

Pacing. Trotting. 

Story's Clay. b. h. by Everett Clay 2:14f 2:18^ 

Captain Croucb, cb. b. by General Smitb 2:13 2:25 

Red Bud, cb. b. by Redfern 2:12^ 2;14| 

Cleveland S., b. b. by Montgomery 2:10 2:24 

Connor, bl. b. by C. F. Clay 2:14 2:13^ 

Babette, b. m. by Sir Jobn 2:12^ 2:22^ 

This exhibit might be further extended, but the foregoing will 
suffice for the purpose intended. The only remark that seems 
needed byway of explanation is that all the animals named, except 
two (San Pedro and Wardwell), made their records first as trotters. 

In surveying the whole situation there is but little encourage- 
ment in attempting to solve the problem of how to reduce the 
ratio of the pacers and at tlie same time avoid the reduction of 
the speed of the trotters. The central point in the problem is 
the development of speed; and so long as the pacer comes to his 
speed so much quicker and easier than the trotter, and so long as 
the best pacer is a little faster, as he has always been, than the 
best trotter, there is no probability that his speed will not be 
developed. All efforts at repression or exclusion of the pacer 
from contesting for prizes at public meetings would be futile and, 
in a sense, unjust. Moreover, this would not be in the province 
of the breeder and he must work out his plans within the boun- 
daries of his own domain. The laws of heredity apply to either 
of the two forms of the trot — the lateral and the diagonal — just 
as certainly as they a,pply to the two forms united. This is the 
breeder's opportunity, and if he grasps it he will make progress 
slowly but surely. In his breeding selections he must lay it 
down as an inviolable rule that all pacers, especially pacers with 
their speed developed, must be excluded, no difference how 
strongly they may be bred in the best trotting lines. If a horse 
produces some fillies that, like Maud S., Sunol and hundreds of 
others, are halfway, or more than halfway, inclined to pace, he 
must rigorously keep them at the trot and nothing but the trot, 
unless he sells them. He must study intelligently the pedigrees 
and produce of the generations away back, and make such selec- 
tions as are most likely to promote his object and least likely to 
violate the rule laid down. Of all the varieties of the horse on 
the face of the globe the American trotter is the typical harness 
horse. Our civilization no longer requires the saddle to climb 
through mountain passes, and to follow seldom-trodden paths. 



500 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

through the wilderness. For either business or pleasure we 
travel on wheels, and we want the bold, bounding trotter to 
propel us. The pacer is the early and only saddle horse in the 
world, but he is not a harness horse. Aside from the few that 
will be used as gambling machines, his value will recede while 
that of the trotter will always advance. In the hands of a man 
of intelligent and fixed purpose it is certainly possible to breed a 
family of trotters in which the appearance of a pacer from birth 
would be of rare occurrence, and the longer such careful selec- 
tions and purposes are continued the more rare will be the recur- 
rence of the lateral habit of action. 

That the development of the speed of the parents was very 
important, if not necessary to tlie increased speed of the progeny, 
was a proposition that was long disputed. Generally, as on other 
questions, each man argued it from the standpoint of his own 
stable, but not a few men of clear minds took that side of the 
question without regard to the potency of the law of heredity. 
In the early stages of the discussion of this question it was a 
difficult one to handle effectively. At that time very few sires, 
and still a less proportion of dams, had ever been regularly 
developed as trotters, hence the field for generalization was 
narrow and many of the instances quoted Avere disi^uted. For a 
time the battle raged quite fiercely around Hambletonian, as he 
was the most prominent stallion of that period, and if a man was 
trying to build up another family he would rave till he got black 
in the face against "Bill Eysdyk's bull." It is but just to say 
that the man who led in all this froth and fury against Hamble- 
tonian was engaged in breeding what he called "Clay Arabs," 
and after dodging his creditors for a number of years his last 
hoof was sold from him by the sheriff. On the other hand, Ham- 
bletonian made his master a, rich man, and he left a large estate. 
Hambletonian was only partially developed, but sufficient to shov.' 
he was a fast colt for his period. (For full particulars see his 
history in another chapter.) Abdallah was a very great sire of 
speed and he was not a developed trotter, but his dam, old 
Amazonia, was quite fully developed. She won many races and 
was the fastest trotter of her day. Whether her speed came 
from a fast pacing ancestry, or whether it came from the reputed 
"son of Messenger," as stated when she was bought near Phila- 
delphia, never can be determined. The "son of Messenger" 
story seemed to be straight, but her form was coarse and plain. 



HOW THE TROTTING HOESE IS BRED. 501 

and her legs were so hairy that many who knew her best con- 
demned the story; hence, all we can say about her is simply that 
she was a fast developed trotter. Andrew Jackson had but little 
trotting inheritance from his sire, and his dam was a fast pacing 
mare of unknown breeding, but his speed was very fully devel- 
oped as a trotter, and he became the progenitor of the Clay and 
the Long Island Black Hawk families, that became famous in 
trotting history. While this reasoning was true in experience 
and sound under the canons of science, it was not strong and 
convincing, for the one and only reason that the basis of the 
generalization was too narrow and lacked in a sufficient number 
of cases to convince the understanding of the skeptical. We 
have had to wait for the accumulation of the experiences of a 
number of years, and now we have the evidence that is so com- 
plete as to be really startling and which no man can gainsay. 
The following little table embraces all the breeding farms in this 
country that have produced three or more trotters with records 
of 2:15 or better, and here the rate of speed is certainly high 
enough and the foundation is certainly broad enough to furnish 
just and safe conclusions: 

Leland Stanford 18 Robert Q. Stoner 4 

Fashion Stud Farm .13 R. S. Veech 3 

William Corbitt 9 C. W. Williams 3 

Wm. H. Wilson 8 Highland Farm (Lee, Mass.) 3 

C. J. Hamlin 7 Falrlawn Farm 3 

Glenview Farm. , 6 E. W. Ayers 3 

Timothy Angiin 5 Charles Backnian . 3 

Henry C. Jewett 4 George H. Ely 3 

Wm. C. France 4 Mrs. S. L. Stout 3 

Woodburn Farm 4 Monroe Salisbury 3 

Quite a number of other breeders have produced one or U\o 
that have made records in 2:15 or better, but I think the above 
list embraces all that have bred three or more with trotting 
records of 2:15 or better. The table will be a surprise to every- 
body, but I doubt whether it will be a greater surprise to any- 
body than it is to myself. At the head of the list stands the late- 
Senator Stanford's great establishment with eighteen to its 
credit, but this is not a fair basis of comparison with any other 
establishment in the whole country, for he had about three hun- 
dred mares in the trotting department of his breeding stud — 
about six times as large as the average of the larger studs of tho 



502 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 

country. The average number of horses in training, the year 
round, was about eighty, exclusive of yearlings and the kinder- 
garten. In attempting to institute a comparison, therefore, with 
the average breeders of the country, we might as well compare 
the daily receipts of John Wanamaker's store with those of the 
little green-grocer on the corner. But at the head of this estab- 
lishment stood the great Electioneer with his strong breeding 
and trotting speed well developed, and indeed, in many resjDCcts 
the greatest horse of his generation. He was the sire of eleven 
in the list, and the remainder were either by his sons or out of 
his daughters. 

Mr. Henry N. Smith, of New York, a prominent Wall Street 
man, became greatly interested in trotting sport, and in 1868 he 
organized a trotting stable of his own, which contained some re- 
markable animals, as will be seen beloAV. His stable was very 
successful, and this success naturally increased his attachment 
to the trotting interests. He then determined to establish a 
breeding farm, and about the year 1869 he purchased the famous 
old Fashion Course adjoining Trenton, New Jersey, embracing 
one hundred and forty-five acres of land and provided Avith an 
excellent mile track and much stabling that had been constructed 
years before for running horses. This property he very appro- 
priately named the "Fashion Stud Farm," and on it he placed 
the grandest assemblage of developed trotters, for breeding pur- 
poses only, that had ever been brought together in this or any 
other country. His stallions were Jay Gould, 3:20^, Tattler, 
2:26, and Gen. Knox, 2:31|. This was Knox's fastest record, 
but it was known he had trotted miles, in races, faster than this. 
The speed of all three horses was developed, and it is evident 
at a glance that there was only one first-class horse among them. 
But the great strength of the establishment was in the grand 
galaxy of mares, some of which I will enumerate, namely, Gold- 
smith Maid, 2:14, Lady Thorn, 2:18^, Lucy, 2:18^, Lady Maud, 
2:18i, Eosalind, 2:21|, Belle Strickland, 2:26, Western Girl, 2:27, 
Idol, 2:27, Big Mary, 2:28^, Daisy Burns, 2:28, Music's Dam (that 
had produced 2:21-| speed), besides others with slower records or 
known to have had their speed developed as fast road mares, 
making in all about thirty mares on the farm, and Mr. Smith 
claimed that every one of them had shown more or less speed as 
trotters. 

Mr. Smith neither knew nor cared much about pedigrees, in a 



HOAV THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 503 

general sense, and when you came to talk to him about "nicks" 
and "trotting pitch" and all that kind of tomfoolery, his mind 
simply recurred to the old adage uttered generations ago: "Trot 
father, trot mother, trot colt." His whole philosophy was 
wrapped up in the one central truth that the horse that could go 
out and trot fast, when bred on the mare that cculd go out and 
trot fast, would produce a colt that would go out and trot fast. 
This was sufficient for him or indeed for anybody else, for it con- 
tains and expresses the whole substance of the laws of heredity. 
Mr. Smith's great mares acquired in their training and develop- 
ment new characters and new capacities which they never would 
have possessed had it not been for the care and skill expended in 
their training. Here we touch the very marrow of a question 
around which the scientists of to-day are warring. Darwin 
taught that such acquisitions were transmissible, of the truth of 
which I have no doubt, but a post-Darwinian school has arisen 
which controverts this position, and claims tliat it weakens and 
destroys the whole evolution theory of creation. But it matters 
not about the hypothesis of evolution concerning things we 
know, for it is simply an attempt to show how all things might 
have been created without a Creator. I have read a great deal 
about evolution and the transraissibility of acquirecl characters, 
but in all I have read I never have met with a lesson so broad and 
so strong as that furnished by Henry N. Smith's great mares, 
proving that acquired characters are transmitted. 

In instituting a comparison between the high-class products of 
the Palo Alto and the Fashion Stud Farms, it seems to be neces- 
sary to place the premier stallions of the two side and side. 
They were half-brothers on the side of the sire, but Electioneer 
liad the greatest speed-producing dam of her generation. She 
was a fast natural trotter herself, and was out of a fast and fully 
developed trotter. Jay Gould was out of a good road mare by 
American Star, but nobody has ever said she had any speed, and 
she was out of a nondescript mare that we know nothing about. 
Gould's dam never produced any other trotter with a reputable 
rate of speed, so far as I have been able to learn. Electioneer 
was trained and developed by Mr. Backman, but he never was in 
a race, and consequently he has no official record. After he 
was taken to Palo Alto he was given quite regular work, and 
it is beyond all doubt that when in stud condition he could show 
a, quarter in a little better than a 2:20 gait. The difference in 



504 THE HORSE OF AMEKICA. 

the rate of speed, therefore, as between the two horses was not. 
very great, but whatever it was must go to the credit of Jay 
Gould. But the offspring of Electioneer had a very great advan- 
tage over those of Jay Gould iii the methodical and skillful de- 
velopment of their speed. In his maternal inheritance as a trot- 
ter, as already indicated. Electioneer had a marked superiority, 
and on an equally high class of developed mares he would have 
far outstripped his rival. Now, with this attempt at a clean-cut 
description of the ttvo horses, we are ready to consider the ques- 
tion in its arithmetical elements, and it will be found a plain 
question of "simple proportion" which anybody can solve in a. 
minute, as follows: "If the Fashion Stud Earm from thirty 
mares produced thirteen trotters with public records of 2:15 or 
better, how many of equal capacity should the Palo Alto Earm 
have produced from three hundred mares?" The answer is one 
hundred and thirty, but the facts, up to the close of 189(5, 
furnish us with the beggarly number of eighteen. 

The grand assemblage of so many great trotters at the Eashion 
Stud Earm, and all for the purpose of breeding, was the subject 
of much comment among breeders from one end of the land to 
the (rJier, and not a few pronounced it all wrong and that it 
would be succeeded by failure. Mr. Smith lacked some of the 
elements that go toward making a man popular, and hence, in 
many cases, there was not much sympathy between him and his 
brother breeders, but he held tenaciously to the central truth 
that the way to breed high-class trotters was to mate high-class 
trotters. His experience has clearly demonstrated the soundness, 
of this canon of breeding, and it has just as clearly demonstrated 
the unsoundness of the notion that high-class trotters can be 
bred from animals that never trotted and never could be made to 
trot. The law, as we have taught it for years, has been vindi- 
cated, and that by experiences so wide and so complete that it 
can no longer be controverted. Mr. Smith has achieved a great 
honor, and as a producer of high-class speed he stands at the head 
of all American trotting-horse breeders. 

As we have now considered a great triumph, with the causes 
that led up to it and the lesson it has taught, it seems to be in 
order to give an example of a great failure and the causes which 
have produced it. Eor more than forty years Woodburn Earm, 
in Kentucky, has been breeding trotters, and up to the close of 
1896 just four Avith records of 2:15 or better have hailed from 



HOW THE TKOTTIXG HORSE IS BEED. 505 

that great establishment. During all these years, and until Palo 
Alto Farm was established, Woodburn was the largest establish- 
ment in this country. With thousands of broad acres of the most 
productive soil, with the possession and control of money with- 
out limit, and with the experiences of forty years in wliich to 
select and breed only to the best, it is the natural and reasonable 
expectation of everybody interested in the question of breeding 
the trotter to look to Woodburn as leading all other establish- 
ments in the whole world in the production of first-class trotters. 
And what has AVoodburn done? AVith her experiences of forty 
jears, with all her broad acres and boundless wealth, up to the 
close of 1896 she has produced just four trotters with records of 
2:15 or better. Instead of leading all others, she is at the wrong 
«nd of the procession, and if we consider the proportional advan- 
tages involved, we find that "all others," little and big, are lead- 
ing her. By referring to the above list of breeders that have 
produced three or more Avith records of 2:15 or better, we find 
that Henry N. Smith has produced thirteen, that William Cor- 
bett, from his little stud in California, has jaroduced nine, and 
that the late William H. Wilson, of Cynthiana, Kentucky, from 
his little band of mares, and without either broad acres or money, 
has produced eight within the past twelve or fifteen years, and 
all exce]3t one by the same horse. This places Mr. Wilson first 
among all Kentucky breeders. In the short period of its exist- 
ence Glenview Farm produced six, and the quite unpretentious 
farmer, Mr. Timothy Anglin, produced five; AY. C. France and 
Colonel R. G. Stoner produced four each — the same number as 
AVoodburn — but they did not require forty years to accomplish 
it. Thus the breeding world, with "the little fellows" on top, 
has gone away ahead and left AVoodburn to mumble over her 
"tin cups," and exult in the many triumphs she has won against 
the watch in 2:30. The policy of AVoodburn for years past 
seems to have been to hold the lead of Kentucky breeders in 
the production of 2:30 trotters, and to this end the youngsters 
are put in training in the early spring and kept at it till the frosts 
come, when such of tiiem as are sure to win are brought out and 
started against the watch, for a "tin cup," and these are the vic- 
tories that AVoodburn Avins. Nobody has ever heard of AA^ood- 
burn entering a youngster in a stake where he would have to win 
on his merits. That would be bringing him down to an equality 
with the colts of such people as AA^illiam H. AA^ilson, Colonel R. 



506 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

G. Stoner, Farmer Timothy Anglin, and all the other "little 
fellows." Woodburn has made a great deal of moiaey out of 
these humbug tin-cup records, and as registration and the 
standard are now absolutely under the control of her manager, 
the 2:30-tin-cup still remains the evidence of a fast trotter, 
worthy of standard rank. True, everybody nowadays laughs 
at the idea that 2:30, with the "tin cup," is any evidence of even 
reputable speed, but as they have given a certain kind of pre- 
eminence and made money in the past, the twins will not be 
separated, but will hold their places just as long as the standard 
is under the present control. 

From this brief examination of the symptoms I think a safe 
diagnosis can be made. The trouble seems to be twofold, or it 
may be said there are two troubles, either one of which is dan- 
gerous, but the two together may prove fatal in the end. It is a 
well-known fact in veterinary science that there are certain dis- 
eases among horses that may be communicated to the men who 
have them in charge. There is one disease, vulgarly called "big- 
head," that comes creeping upon its victim before he is aware 
of its existence or approach, and against the insidious steps of 
this destroyer the manager at Woodburn should be affectionately 
warned. Sham records of 2:30 for standard rank are no longer 
welcomed with enthusiasm in this country. The other trouble 
is not so much with the manager as with the material which he 
manages, which seems to be att'ected with what may be called 
"dry-rot." This view of the non-productive character of the- 
AVoodburn breeding stock, when measured by tirst-class perform- 
ers, seems to be borne out by the fact that the names of those 
gentlemen who have depended most largely on Woodburn blood 
do not appear on the foregoing list as ths producers of first-class 
trotters. For about forty years the fame of Woodburn as the 
greatest of all our breeding establishments has been as wide as. 
the boundaries of the nation. But notwithstanding the weight 
and influence which great wealth and an unblemished name may 
liave secured, the records up to the close of the year 189fi have 
deposed her from the first rank as a breeder of trotting horses, 
and sent her away to the rear, where she now occupies her true 
place in the eighth rank. It is well known to everybody that, 
since the days of the first Mr. Alexander, Woodburn has never 
entered a colt in a stake nor started one against other people's 
colts, prize or no prize. This air of assumed superiority is; 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE 16 BRED, 507 

sought to be explained on high moral grounds against the evils 
of horse-racing. This is like the man who never tasted whisky 
for conscience' sake, in view of the great evil it was doing in the 
world, and yet he was the chief owner in a large distillery. At 
the great local meetings in Kentucky practically all the breeding 
establishments of that region, except Woodburn, are repre- 
sented in the stakes, and while they are being contested Wood- 
burn will come in with a string of youngsters, between the heats, 
and win sham records in 2:30 for "tin cups." Depending on 
this kind of test and this kind of development, it is not remark- 
able that all the small breeders of the State have left Woodburn 
in the rear. This shining example of failure teaches unmistaka- 
bly the necessity of honest and full development of breeding 
stock in order to produce high-class trotters. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED (Continued). 

Breeding the trotter intelligently an industry of modern development — Pleth- 
ora of turf papers, and their timidity of the truth — The accepted theories, 
old and new — Failure of the "thoroughbred blood in the trotter" idea — 
" Thoroughbred foundations," and the Register — " Like begets like," the 
great central truth — Long-continued efEf)rts to breed trotters from runners 
— New York the original source of supply of trotting blood to all the 
States — Kentucky's beginning in breeding trotters — R. A. Alexander, and 
the founding of Woodburn — The " infallibility " of Woodburn pedigrees 
— Refusal to enter fictitious crosses in the Register and the results — The 
genesis and history of the standard — Its objects, effects and influence — 
Establishing the breed of trotters — The Kentucky or "Pinafore" stand- 
dard — Its purposes analyzed — The "Breeders' Trotting Stud Book" and 
how it was compiled — Failure and collapse of the Kentucky project — 
Another unsuccessful attempt to capture the Register — How honest 
administration of the Register made enemies — The National Breeder's 
Association and the Chicago Convention — Detailed history of the sale and 
transfer of the Register, the events that led up to it, and the results — 
Personal satisfaction and benefits from tbe transfer, and the years of rest 
and congenial study in preparing this book — The end. 

All that American breeders know about producing the trot- 
ting horse they have learned in the past twenty-five years. In 
that short period this interest has developed from practically 
nothing into a great national industry that has placed this coun- 
try in front of all the nations of the earth in the character, qual- 
ity and speed of the light harness horse. It is true we had the 
"raw material" out of which to build up this new breed, and this 
had been in our possession we may say for generations, but we 
•didn't know how to use it. There may be some apparent indeli- 
cacy in making the remark, but I think every intelligent man 
who is acquainted with the subject will sustain me in saying that, 
had it not been for the compilation of the "Trotting Eegister" 
and Wallace^ s Monthly, with the facts, statistics and reasonings 
which were developed through them, we would know no more 
about the trotter to-day than we did thirty years ago. The trot- 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. .309' 

ting horse, therefore, as we contemplate him in his position of 
superiority to all others of his kind, is simply the result of great 
labor in collecting the facts and sound reasoning from the lessons 
taught by those facts. With all the facts placed in his hand, 
any breeder of intelligence, if he were honest, could not fail to 
reach the truth; but, unfortunately, all breeders have never 
learned to divest themselves of their prejudices, and to accej)t 
the plain teachings of the facts, just as they are. 

To be able to think intelligently and honestly and to reason 
soundly, is the first requisite to success in breeding the trotter. 
It is a seeming paradox, but it is nevertheless true, that many 
men who are able to think a little are not able to think honestly. 
It is easy to understand why a man may act dishonestly, for there 
is the hope of gain to impel him; but why he should think dis- 
honestly is not so apparent. Let us illustrate this matter of 
thinking dishonestly. On an occasion a correspondent asked a 
breeding journal to give a list of the thoroughbred horses that 
had sired trotters. A list of horses, represented as thoroughbred 
in the reply, was given, embracing someten or twelve, about half 
of which were either unknown or dependent upon the most flimsy 
kind of representation as to their blood. It is not with the 
actual misrepresentation of the blood of most of the animals 
named, but with the use that was made of the list that I will now 
speak. After accepting the list as true and genuine, the corre- 
spondent comes before the public with his conclusions. He 
shows that these dozen performers from about as many horses 
made an average record of 2:24 and a fraction, and then trium- 
phantly raises the question whether any single trotting-bred sire 
can show as many performers with as low an average record. 
Having satisfied himself that all the running-bred sires, real and 
imaginary, put together could more than equal any one trotting- 
bred sire in the average high rate of speed, he reaches the pro- 
found conclusion that the way to breed the trotter is to go to the 
runner. This is a real and not an imaginary instance of a few 
years ago. No doubt this man thought he was thinking when he 
reached this conclusion, and that he had solved the problem of 
breeding the trotter; but, poor man, he was simply trying to 
advertise a half-and-half-bred stallion he had in his stable. 

I have no old scores to pay off against the breeding and sport- 
ing press, for I generally managed to pay them off as we went 
along, and the triumph of the views I advanced and sustained 



510 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

has become sufficiently complete to satisfy the most fastidious. 
It seems to be a real misfortune that there are so many weekly 
journals in this field and most of them leading a precarious exist- 
ence. It may be observed in most directions that the manage- 
ment of these journals is hesitating and timid, as though afraid 
that somebody might be offended and a five or ten-dollar adver- 
tisement lost thereby. It is ail right to make the advertising 
patronage remunerative, but it is all wrong when that depart- 
ment is placed in control of all the others, from the fear that 
somebody may be offended if the truth be told. In the present 
depressed condition of the breeding interests, and indeed of all 
Interests, the horsemen of the whole country feel that they are 
carrying too heavy a burden in sujoporting so many papers, and 
the question of the "survival of the fittest" is already imminent. 
But, whatever the present financial and intellectual condition of 
the breeding and sporting publications of the country may be, a 
number of them have had their part in the discussions and 
wrangles that were naturally coincident with the progress of the 
revolution on the question of breeding the trotter, which finally 
brushed everything out of its way and fully established the truth 
of the laws of inheritance. Twenty-five years ago there was a 
good number of intelligent and capable writers on the horse, and 
they were either engaged in editing horse papers or contributed 
to them, and one and all they were handicapped with the idea, 
inherited from their fathers, that whatever of excellence that was 
found in the American horse came from the English race horse, and 
that all the speed, at any gait, that he was able to show came from 
the same source. From this absurd fallacy, it naturally followed 
that speed at the trot was merely the result of accident or of the 
persistent skill of the trainer. This was, substantially, the view 
of the general public at that date. 

When, therefore, it was announced that the horse was far more 
than a mere machine, that he had a mental as well as a physical 
organization, that these were both equally matters of inheritance, 
that one horse ran fast because his ancestors ran fast and that 
another horse trotted fast because his ancestors were able to trot 
fast, and that no fast runner was ever a fast trotter, there was a 
tremendous hubbub. This was a new gospel, and it threatened 
to annihilate the stupid Anglo-Arabian fetish that all that was 
good in horsedom must of necessity come from that source. For 
generations the belief had been universal that the only way to 



UOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 511 

improve the horse for any purpose under the sun was to "breed 
up" to the running horse and thus get back to the blood of the 
pure Arabian. On the other hand, and as opposed to this ancient 
fallacy that the way to breed the trotter was to go to the runner, 
it was urged, with a thousand proofs at the back of it, that the 
way to breed the the runner was to go to the horse that could 
run, and the way to breed the trotter was to go to the horse that 
could trot. Here was a direct issue squarely made, and it was 
not to be expected that such men as Charles J. Foster, Peter C. 
Kellogg, Joseph C. Simpson, etc., all writers of ability, would 
quietly surrender without a battle. They had committed them- 
selves to the running-blood traditions, some rich men had shaped 
their breeding studs in that direction, and without deciding 
whether a rich man had necessarily more sense than a poor one, 
they knew instinctively that a rich man could be more liberal in 
advertising, and that he could be more generous in properly 
recognizing the little courtesies that might be extended in the 
way of keeping his establishment before the public in an approv- 
ing light. Thus, with an eye to tlie weather-gauge, the editors 
were able to maintain their own consistency. As the experiences 
of every succeeding year added thousands of proofs to the jjlain 
proposition that the trotter inherits his speed from a trotting 
ancestry, the "irreconcilables" began to shift their ground, con- 
ceding that there must be trotting blood to give the action, but 
that there must be "speed-sustaining" blood from the thorough- 
bred to give courage and endurance. This was the second posi- 
tion, and in a commercial sense it was shrewdly chosen for the 
advantage of certain localities. This position furnished the 
"thoroughbred foundation" argument, and for a time it had its 
supporters. This theory also furnished its promised commercial 
advantages to such localities as had formerly bred running horses, 
and it was but a week till everybody in those localities had 
"thoroughbred foundations" for their trotting pedigrees, and 
those who did not have them could easily procure them. This 
brought an avalanche of pedigrees, especially from Kentucky, 
with "thoroughbred foundations," consisting of long strings of 
dams by famous horses, but without names, dates, breeders or 
histories, and many of them impossible. To checkmate this 
inundation of manufactured foundations, in the office of the 
Register, a rule was adopted requiring satisfactory identification 
and history of each dam, and where that could not be given the 



512 THE HOKSE OF AMEEICA. 

pedigree would be cut off. This rule saved the "Trotting Regis- 
ter" from becoming the mere dumping place for countless frauds, 
but it aroused such a feeling of antagonism on the part of the 
manager of Woodburn Farm that he, at once, started an opposi- 
tion Register to be compiled at the farm, under his own personal 
direction. Of this, and what came of it, I will speak further on. 
It is but just that I should say here, that from a wide knowledge 
of men and from a study of their moral fiber extending through 
many years in connection with horse affairs, I have found many 
Kentuckians that were thoroughly truthful and reliable in pedi- 
gree matters; but at the same time it must be admitted that the 
conditions there for generations past have not been favorable, 
among horsemen, for the cultivation of the highest type of truth- 
fulness. Many of them have been making their own pedigrees 
for so long, and padding them out with nameless dams by sup- 
positious sires, to suit themselves — and the market — that they 
don't take kindly to any restraint in what they consider their own 
business. 

The great central truth in reproduction, whether of animals 
or plants, is summed up in the homely but axiomatic phrase, 
"like begets like. " With the rank and file of intelligent breeders 
who were able to think, this axiom was soon accepted as a funda- 
mental and basic truth. The phrase "trotting instinct" was 
soon in everybody's mouth, and the broad, plain distinction be- 
tween that and "running instinct" was so palpable and easy of 
practical comprehension that the fallacy of a "thoroughbred 
foundation" was buried out of sight. When it was considered 
that the instinct of the one was to put forth his supreme effort 
at the trot, and of the other to put forth his supreme effort at 
the gallop, the irreconcilable antagonism between the two gaits 
was apparent. The cumulative evidences furnished year after 
year by the official records of performances on the tracks, and all 
going to show that the trotting horse must have a trotting in- 
heritance, soon became so overwhelming in the uniformity of 
their teachings, and so completely unanswerable in the force of 
numbers, that no man able to observe and think could any longer 
doubt the truth of the position taken. But, unfortunately, some 
men can neither observe nor think, and, what is still more un- 
fortunate, they not infrequently undertake to fill the r61e of 
public teachers and leaders of public thought. We can under- 
stand how a man of average intelligence may be wise in many 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 613 

things and foolish in others. When we come to study the 
phenomena he presents, we find he has studied the subjects on 
which he is wise, and he is ignorant on the subjects on which he 
is foolish. Like "Brother Jasper," the negro preacher, he is 
ready to maintain against all comers that "the sun do move." 
Another class of men in the writing fraternity, but fortunately 
they are restricted in numbers, have brains enough to apprehend 
the facts surrounding them and their teachings, but they have 
not conscience enough to lift them above their toadying instincts, 
for fear they might miss the crumbs from a rich patron's table. 
Another type of man, generally a beginner in the breeding busi- 
ness, has a half-and-half-bred stallion at the head of his little 
stud, and he is uniformly an enthusiast for the "thoroughbred 
foundation." As might be expected, he fills the columns of all 
the papers accessible with his "views of breeding," which are 
always shaped to fit his own stallion and bring him patronage. 
We might here go on and point out other types of would-be 
"teachers" that would be entertaining, but certainly not profita- 
ble or instructive. We might follow the vagaries of different 
writers and show the origin and reason for those vagaries, but as 
the breeding world has become far more intelligent, and I think 
more honest, than it was twenty-five years ago, one vagary after 
another has disappeared and been buried out of sight. All such 
trumpery as, "to breed the trotter you must go to the runner," 
"more running blood in the trotter," "thoroughbred founda- 
tion," etc., are phrases that are never heard in our dtty among 
intelligent breeders. A mile in two minutes and thirty seconds 
is "played out" as an evidence of trotting speed, but it is still 
held in its place as such evidence to suit the blood and methods 
of development at one particular establishment, and to gather in 
the money for registration from the little felloAvs. 

Anything slower than "two-twenty" is no longer looked uj)on 
as of any value in a trotting sense. 

This astonishing increase of speed has come hand in hand with 
a closer and more careful observance of the law of inheritance, 
or heredity. If we breed the merino ram upon a merino ewe, we 
know that the produce will be a merino. If we breed the 
cotswold on the cotswold we know the produce will be a cotswold, 
but if we breed the merino on the cotswold the produce will be a 
mongrel. The phsyical inheritance is destroyed, and in projjagat- 
ing from this mongrel confusion, uncertainty and disappoint- 



514 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

ment always follow. If we go a step higher and consider those 
types of domestic animals endowed with a species of mentality 
that we call instinct, we find the illustrations still more marked 
and effective. The finely bred greyhound coupled with the 
finely bred pointer produces neither a greyhound nor a pointer, 
but only a nondescript cur. Sometimes the instincts of the 
greyhound and sometimes the instincts of the pointer may be the 
more masterful, but the inheritance is broken and divided, and 
the mongrel should never be used for propagation. If we couple 
the very best specimen of the English race horse with the very 
best and fastest American trotting mare, the produce would be 
literally half-and-half bred. The sire never could trot a mile in 
four minutes and the dam never could run a mile in two minutes, 
and what is the produce good for? Once in a hundred times the 
running instinct might predominate and develop something of 
a runner, and once in a hundred times the trotting instinct 
might predominate, as in the case of Bonnie Scotland and Water- 
witch, and produce something of a trotter, but of what value 
would the half-and-half progeny be for breeding purposes? 
Whatever might be the characteristics of their progeny, physi- 
cally, they would undoubtedly and invariably inherit and transmit 
not only divided, but antagonistic, instincts that would require 
generations of careful selection and training to get rid of. While 
the "featherheads" may, for the sake of personal consistency, 
which is a very weighty matter of public concern, still advocate 
"more running blood in the trotter;" and while one great con- 
cern may still look one way, on this question, and row the other, 
it being literally true that she has not added a single drop of 
running blood to her trotting stud in a quarter of a century, it 
is safe to say that the whole body of intelligent breeders of this 
country have come to accept and obey the great central truth 
that the American trotter has reached his present state of perfec- 
tion by the development of his unbroken and undivided trotting 
inheritances. These inheritances have been cumulative and thus 
made stronger in each developed generation of ancestors, and if 
this high development of speed is kept up for a series of succes- 
sive generations the speed of the American trotter will be placed 
at a point of which we have never yet dreamed. The inherited 
and developed instinct to stick to the trot as the fastest gait of 
which the horse is conscious, coupled with skillful preparation 



HOW THE TROTTING HOKSE IS BRED. 515 

and handling, are the two factors that will always put the Ameri- 
can trotting horse in the front rank and keep him there. 

In the early chapters of this work we have considered the 
horse in his original habitat and his distribution among the 
different peoples of the then known world, but we have not con- 
sidered the distribution of the trotter through the different 
regions of our own country. Fifty or sixty years ago tlie trot- 
ting horse was hardly known outside of a limited territory em- 
bracing the cities of New York and Philadelphia. In the New 
England States the trappy little Morgan filled the place of the 
driving horse with very great acceptance, but he had no speed as 
a trotter. We then began to see and hear something of the 
*' Maine Messengers," that were trotters in reality and able to 
demonstrate their speed and courage on the track. Occasionally 
a converted pacer would strike a trot and show speed that was 
phenomenal in that day, but it was uniformly treated as "acci- 
dental." There was a great deal of high-class trotting blood in 
the region of Philadelphia, and for a time that was the leading 
center of the trotting interest, but it did not receive that measure 
of encouragement and support that was necessary to its permanent 
growth, and the seat of empire was transferred to Long Island 
and Orange County, New York. South of Mason and Dixon's 
line the trotter was tabooed, as a mongrel nondescript, and ''not 
worthy of the attention of a gentleman, sah." They had run- 
ners and they had pacers, and as ail excellence in the shape of a 
horse, at whatever gait, as they argued, must come from the 
running horse or his progenitor, the Arabian, they had already 
tlie very best material in the world for the production of the fast 
trotter. The belief as expressed in their motto, "Speed at the 
gallop was a guarantee of speed at any other gait required," per- 
vaded all minds and directed all action in matters of breeding. 
Thus they worked away for years trying to breed trotters from 
blood that never could and that never did trot, and, strange as 
it may seem, there are still some people in that region, at the 
olose of the nineteenth century, trying to breed trotters from 
runners. From New York as a common center all the breeding 
States obtained their supplies of trotting blood, and they in time 
became sources of supply. The only exception to this is tliat of 
the pacer, which eventually developed into a trotting element 
of some prominence and value, especially in the West and South. 

The prominence of Kentucky as a breeding center is wholly 



516 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

due to the trotting blood she obtained from New York. She had 
plenty of pacing blood that was good, of its kind, but it was so 
uncertain and sporadic that it did not commend itself to the 
breeders of that section as a source of trotting speed. From an 
early period in the history of the State the habits and fancies of 
the people, in the richer portions, had been "horsey," from"^their 
knowledge and familiarity with running races for many years, 
and thus when the demand came for trotters they struck out 
vigorously to meet that demand. When Mr. E. A. Alexander 
organized the great Woodburn Farm he established a department 
of trotters, which was among the very first of any magnitude in 
the State. As he had been reared abroad he knew nothing about 
American pedigrees, and in making his purchases of breeding 
stock he was victimized by every sharper who came along with a 
brood mare to sell. He was a man of honest purpose and excel- 
lent natural judgment which told him to buy such breeding 
animals as could trot themselves or had produced trotters, and if 
he had been content to stop with what little he knew of their 
breeding he would have been all right; but, meantime, the pro- 
fessional pedigree-maker — the successor to the famous Patrick 
Nesbitt Edgar — came along and tricked them out in an excel- 
lent quality of pinchbeck pedigrees containing plenty of running 
blood that had never trotted nor produced a trotter. When the 
first Mr. Alexander died he was succeeded in the proprietorship' 
of the great estate by his brother, a very worthy gentleman who 
made it a law to the establishment that none of his horses should 
ever start in a race. His fancy and knowledge were all in the 
line of cattle, and he seemed to neither know nor care anything 
about horses. Soon after this change in the ownership of the 
estate a new manager was placed in charge, and it was soon 
manifest that however absurd and untruthful the pedigrees of 
breeding stock might be, they must not be questioned nor cor- 
rected by any authority whatever. This doctrine of infallibility 
as api)lied to Woodburn pedigrees was wholly incompatible with 
what I conceived to be my duty to the breeding public. I had 
accepted the Woodburn pedigrees, at the start, as trustworthy, 
on the grounds of the eminence and high character of the first 
Mr. Alexander, and it was far more than a surprise to me when 
I discovered something of the extent to which the pedigrees of 
the whole establishment had been honeycombed with the dis- 
honesty of "sharpers" and "pedigree-makers.'* These fictions. 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 517 

antedated any compilation or known authorit}' of trotting pedi- 
grees, and there can be no doubt they were accepted as honest 
statements of the blood of the animals in question, while many 
of them were wholly fictitious and all of them contained crosses 
on the maternal side that were merely imaginary. These embel- 
lishments, to call them by no harder name, were uniformly in 
one and the same direction, all stretching out to embrace as 
much of the blood of the running horse as possible, and often a 
great deal that was impossible. Here I may state the general 
fact that all Kentuckians had claimed and exercised the right so 
long to shape up their pedigrees to suit themselves and to bring 
the most nioney in the market that a number of them still 
claimed that as a right and became somewhat restive when told 
that their pedigrees would be recorded just as far as they were 
proved, and no further. Two or three breeders expostulated 
against this rule, and in reply they were assured that they had a 
perfect right to shape their pedigrees as they pleased, but that in= 
sertion in the Register was the same as my personal indorsement, 
and that this indorsement could not be given to any pedigree 
that I did not know or believe to be honest and true. This 
ended all doubts about the position and character of the Register, 
and I think that every breeder of any standing in Kentucky 
submitted to the rule, with the solitary exception of Woodburn 
Farm. The manager of that establishment was not only unwill- 
ing to have the infallibility of Woodburn pedigrees called in 
question, but he aspired to the control of the pedigrees of all 
other breeders in the whole country. When the National Asso- 
ciation of Trotting Horse Breeders was organized in December, 
1876, he was not only asked, but pressed, to become a member 
and take part in its management and control. But no, he would 
be "boss," or he would be nothing. New York was not the 
right place to organize it. It should be organized in Kentucky, 
and with the manager of Woodburn at the head of it. The 
arrogance of this young manager was something amazing, his 
intrigues to get control of registration were continued for a num- 
ber of years, and the means employed to accomplish his endis 
were of such a character as clearly to demonstrate that of all the 
men in the world he was the last one who should be placed in 
the control of such a trust. As this controversy extended 
through the period of building up the breed of trotters, it is of 
necessity a part of the literature of the formation of that breed, 



518 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

and as some of the more salient points seem to be of sufficient 
importance to hand down to future generations, I will here con- 
sider them very briefly. In doing this I am conscious of some 
feeling of embarrassment on account of the personal matters that 
must enter into the recital, but it is a part of the trotting history 
of the times, and I prefer that the truth may be preserved, what- 
ever may be the teachings of the canons of taste. 

In the collection and registration of pedigrees that seemed to 
be more or less closely allied to trotting blood, embracing all 
contained in the first, second and third volumes of the "Trotting 
Register," there was no guide or rule to determine what was- 
Avorthy of registration, in a trotting sense, and what was un- 
worthy. I had a general conception of the families that had 
produced trotters and those that had not, but I had no rule by 
which I could decide what to admit and what to reject, except 
that all actual performers of reputable speed must be admitted. 
To undertake, on individual responsibility, to determine what 
amount of trotting blood should be requisite to admission, and 
how that amount should be measured, was quite too hazardous, 
except when backed by a strong moral and numerical force of 
breeders. Hence my active interest in the organization of the 
National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, and my earnest 
desire that it might be composed of breeders of high standing 
and character from all parts of the country. Upon the organiza- 
tion of the association, its character was so entirely acceptable to 
me that I did not hesitate to place in its hands the supervisor3i con- 
trol of the registration of pedigrees for the "Trotting Register," 
to be exercised by a Board of Censors to be appointed annually. 
The first board was appointed and entered on its functions Janu- 
ary 15, 1877, by formulating the first set of rules relating to the 
requisites necessary to the acceptance of pedigrees, in their form 
and completeness. The third volume was then approaching 
completion and the Board of Censors commenced their super- 
visory duties on that volume. 

The members of the Breeders' Association were generally men 
of intelligence, and capable of thinking, and every suitable op- 
portunity was improved to get their individual views on the ques- 
tion as to whether a set of rules could be adopted by the associa- 
tion that would distinguish between animals that had trotted 
themselves or produced trotters in say 2:30, and animals that 
had not. Not many had ever thought of the subject, but all 



HOW THE TROTTIIfG HOUSE IS BRED. 619 

were ready to think of it more. The only objection urged was 
that such a scheme would certainly reduce the fees for registra- 
tion in large degree. To this I assented as doubtless true for the 
time being, though in the end it would largely increase them, 
but declared that it was not for the fees I was working, but to 
establish a breed of trotting horses. When satisfied that a good 
number of the leading breeders were thinking favorably of the 
subject, it was presented to the public in a very modest and un- 
pretentious way. In discussing "The Future of the Breeders' 
Association," in Wallace's Motithly for April, 1878, the following 
language occurs: 

" lu addition to the thought and labor necessary to secure such an organiza- 
tion as the interest demands, there is another topic that will require great 
deliberation and wisdom, in the near future. The association must fix a stand- 
ard of admission to the official record of pedigrees. Up to the present time 
there has been no standard of blood requisite to secure a place in the Register. 
This matter has been left wholly to the compiler, without even so much as 
advice on the subject. The Register, therefore, has no value as a classifica- 
tion of blood, but only as a reliable record of the pedigrees of the animals it 
contains, whatever their blood may be." 

This is the first intimation ever given to the public, so far as 
I know, that any body of men ever contemplated the con- 
struction of a standard to control the admission of trotting horses 
to specific rank and registration. The question was thus placed 
openly before the public and it was looked upon favorably by 
those most immediately interested. In due time, at a meeting 
of the Breeders' Association, a committee was appointed to whom 
was referred all the suggestions that had been made for the pro- 
posed scheme. Soon afterward (November 19, 1879) the com- 
mittee reported the standard to a large, enthusiastic and har- 
monious meeting of the Association, and it was unanimously 
adopted as follows: 

THE STANDARD OF ADMISSION TO REGISTRATION. 

(Established by the National Association of Trotting-Horse Breeders, 
November 19, 1879.) 

In order to define what constitutes a trotting-bred borse, and to establish a 
BREED of trotters on a more intelligent basis, the following rules are adopted 
to control admission to the records of pedigrees. When an animal meets the 
requirements of admission and is duly registered, it shall be accepted as a 
standard trotting-bred animal. 



520 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

First. — Any stallion that lias, himself, a record of two minutes and thirty 
seconds (2:30) or better; provided any of his get has a record of 2:40 or better; 
or provided his sire or his dam, his grandsire or his grandam, is already a 
standard animal. 

Second. — Any mare or gelding that has a record of 2:30 or better. 

Third. — Any horse that is the sire of two animals with a record of 3:30 or 
better. 

Fourth. — Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a record of 2:30 or 
better; provided he has either of the following additional qualifications : 

1. — A record himself of 2:40 or better. 

2. — Is the sire of two other animals with a record of 2:40 or better. 

3, — Has a site or dam, grandsire or grandam that is already a standard 
animal. 

FiPTH. — Any mare that has produced an animal with a record of 2:30 or 
better. 

Sixth. — The progeny of a standard horse when out of a standard mare. 

Seventh. —The progeny of a standard horse out of a mare by a standard 
horse. 

Eighth. — The progeny of a standard horse when out of a mare whose dam 
is a standard mare. 

Ninth. — Any mare that has a record of 2;40 or better, and whose sire or 
dam, grandsire or grandam is a standard animal. 

Tenth. — A record to wagon of 2:35 or better shall be regarded as equal to 
a 2:30 record. 

In this, its original form, the standard was administered suc- 
cessfully and smoothly through the period of the compilation of 
volumes four, five, six, and seven of the "Trotting Register," 
when it was revised by the Breeders' Association as follows: 

THE STANDARD. 

(AS REVISED AND ADOPTED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF TROTTING- 
HORSE BREEDERS, DECEMBER 14, 1887.) 

In order to define what constitutes a trotting bred horse and to establish a 
BREED of trotters on a more intelligent basis, the following rules are adopted 
to control admission to the records of pedigrees. When an animal meets the 
requirements of admission and is duly registered it shall be accepted as a 
standard irotting-bred animal. 

First. — Any stallion that has himself a record of two minutes and thirty 
seconds (2:30) or better, provided any of his get has a record of 2:35 or better, 
or provided his sire or his dam is already a standard animal. 

Second. — Any mare or gelding that has a record of 2:30 or better. 

Third. — Any horse that is the sire of two animals with a record of 2:30 or 
better. 

FOORTH. — Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a record of 2:30 or 
better, provided he has either of the following additional qualifications: (1) A 
record himself of 2:35 or better. (2) Is the sire of two other animals with a 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 521 

record of 2:35 or better. (3) Has a sire or dam tbat is already a standard 
animal. 

Fifth. — Any mare that has produced an animal with a record of 2:30 or 
better. 

Sixth. — The progeny of a standard horse when out of a standard mare. 

Seventh. — The female progeny of a standard horse when out of a mare by 
a standard horse. 

Eighth. — The female progeny of a standard horse when out of a mare 
whose dam is a standard mare. 

Ninth. — Any mare that has a record of 2:35 or better, and whose sire or 
dam is a standard animal. 

From the indefinite and unsatisfactory starting point, and 
without any rule or guide as to what should be admitted, except 
the pointless phrase, *'well related to trotting blood," it soon be- 
came evident that the Register would soon contain as much chaff 
as wheat. Through the Monthly, which was established for 
that purpose, I did not despair of the success of my aim in lead- 
ing the intelligent breeders of the country up to the point of 
recognizing and establishing the American trotting horse as a 
BREED. The road was long, steep, rough in places, and beset 
with prejudices on all sides, but labor conquers all things, and 
we have in the standard and its revision, as given above, the 
culmination and perfection of the implements that were to effect 
this purpose: To reject a horse from registration merely because 
he was running bred would have been "flying in the face" of the 
prejudices of nearly everybody, but to reject him because neither 
he nor any of his tribe had ever been able to trot, Avas philosoph- 
ical and just; and as it gave no section of the country an advan- 
tage over any other section, and no theory an advantage over a 
fact, no man could gainsay or criticise its justice or its truthful- 
ness. This was the wedge that split the rock of ignorance and 
prejudice, and thus exploded the theories of generations as to the 
value of running blood in the trotter. As I look at it to-day, 
the undertaking to gather up a great lot of fragments and con- 
vert them into a breed was a tremendous one, and although it 
was backed up with brains and influence, it is doubtful whether 
many of its promoters had any very clear conception of the re- 
sults that would follow— either its success or its failure. It 
assumed to direct and control the trotting-horse breeding interest 
of the whole country, and to leave its impress for all time. It 
required no gift of prophecy to see this as the result of success, 
and neither did it require any gift of prophecy to foresee that 



522 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

failure would wipe out the work already done in both the Regis- 
ter and the Monthly. It was the crucial period in the history of 
these publications. A misstep or an unwise provision would 
have brought a disastrous end. To found a breed of horses rest- 
ing primarily and wholly upon performance and the blood de- 
scended directly from performers, or the producers of performers, 
was something that never had been attempted in the world. The 
basis was wholly unique, but it commended itself to the public 
judgment as a just one, and as the only foundation upon which 
the proposed breed could be successfully established. The basis 
was wisely chosen and the superstructure erected thereon was 
equally wise in all its provisions. Never have we known a set of 
men to work more earnestly or more unselfishly for the common 
purpose. 

After very careful consideration in a large and intelligent com- 
mittee, the finished labors of that committee was reported to the 
Association on November 19, 1879, at the Everett House, in this- 
city, and the standard was then and there adopted without so 
much as a question and without a voice or -a vote being raised 
against it. Thus the standard was launched in unity and wis- 
dom, and from that day it went forward on its mission of educat- 
ing the people. The "Trotting Register" has done much and the 
Monthly has done something in the way of education, but the 
standard has been the special formula through which all these 
teachings have been brought home to the breeder, great and 
small, in a manner that educated both his mind and his pocket. 
If we could conceive of the brightest mind directing the most 
pointed pen for the period of a hundred years in the special 
department of how to breed the trotting horse, we feel sure he 
would fail to accomplish as much as this little, practical formula 
called the "Standard" accomplished in the first dozen years of 
its existence. 

When the standard was adopted and put in operation there was 
a material advance in the market value of all animals registered 
under its requirements, and it thus became not only a matter of 
honor, but of profit, to breed only in the standard ranks. Every- 
body was willing to pay more for a good horse tliat was standard 
in his breeding than for one equally good that was not standard 
in his breeding. A record of 2:30 was then accepted as evidence 
of a high rate of speed, everywhere. There was a grand rush for 
standard rank and the number of fraudulent performances sent 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 523 

forward in order to secure such classification was overwhelming. 
This led to many rejections of performances, adroitly shaped up 
to deceive, and every rejection made a batch of enemies. But 
great as this evil was, there was another that began to manifest 
itself very strongly. The Eegister was rapidly filling up with 
colts under rules seven and eight, and every one of them, as soon 
as he was able to stand up, wanted his number, for he was to be 
kept as a standard stallion. The public attention was urgently 
called to the preponderating numbers of these feebly bred colts, 
as a menace to the hitherto unimpeded progress of the grand 
purpose of establishing a breed. The Breeders' Association 
thereupon took up the standard and revised it, wholly in the 
direction of higher qualifications and more stringent require- 
ments. By comparing the revised standard with the original, 
above, it will be observed that rule ten was stricken out, and 
that rules seven and eight were restricted to fillies only, thus 
cutting off the source of danger altogether. The rates of sub- 
sidiary speed were advanced and there was a tightening up of the 
requirements in other directions. This revision did not suit all 
interests, especially beginners who were just starting to breed 
their first colt by a standard horse, but as every one knew there 
would never be a time when there would not be just such ground- 
less complaints, the action received the hearty indorsement and 
support of all breeders who kept in view the central object of 
the standard in building up a breed of trotters. 

When fast horses began to multiply by the thousand, annually, 
say about 1890-91, we began to hear an increasing number of 
gibes at the standard as "a, slow coach," ''away behind the times," 
"a 2:30 horse was no longer considered a trotter," etc., and 
every one of these taunts had an element of truth in it. The 
standard, as the teacher of the breeders of the country, had not 
only produced trotters, but great trotters, with marvelous rapid- 
ity. At one time it was the ambition of all breeders to place 
their stock inside of the limits of the standard, not only because 
it was an honor, but because it added materially to the bank ac- 
count and to the value of every animal, so bred, in the establish- 
ment. But breeders both great and small are no longer stimu- 
lated to enter a standard with the antiquated 2:30 rate of speed 
that is everywhere received with a sneer. When the standard 
was formed on the basis of 2:30, it was within about fifteen 
seconds of the fastest performance, and if the same ratio were 



524 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 

now preserved, "2:30" would be stricken out and "2:20" inserted 
instead. The breeders would again be stimulated to look forward 
with hope, and not backward with regret. 

Of the numerous criticisms of the standard after its adoption, 
there were none of any special force or practicability, but from 
one source there was a persistent war made upon it, not because 
it was unfair in its principles or administration, nor because it 
lacked vigor in its support, but evidently because it was not con- 
trolled in Kentucky, and that the pivotal authority of that con- 
trol was not placed in the hands of the manager at Woodburn. 
It is but just that I should say here that many of the stanchest 
and most enthusiastic supporters of the standard and the Register 
were Kentuckians, and with the exceptions of two or three 
breeders who stood well in their community, and a few others 
who were bankrupt in character and morals, there were no 
enemies to engage in this war. I would gladly skip over this 
period, for it is of necessity more or less personal, but to omit it 
would leave the history of the times and of the formation of the 
breed of trotters incomplete, and liable to misrepresentation by 
those who may come after us. 

The first public suggestion or demand for a standard, and 
the first use of the word "standard" in connection with rules for 
registration, was addressed to the Breeders' Association, in the 
paragraph quoted above, from the Montlily for April, 1878. In 
that paragraph, while no specific rules were formulated, the 
whole scope of such rules was foreshadowed. 

In the course of correspondence with breeders all over the 
country as to their views about the provisions of the proposed 
standard, I received from Mr. Henry C. McDowell, of Kentucky, 
a little slip of paper, perhaps as large as your hand, marked 
"copyrighted," on which were printed a number of rules that 
purported to be rules for the admission of certain animals, trot- 
ters and runners, to some book that was not named or described. 
This little paper was courteously received and commended as a 
step in the right direction. 

The idea of inserting the word "copyrighted" seemed to be 
that it might serve as a "scare head" and thus deter all makers 
of books from attempting to make a book under the provisions of 
these rules. These rules were strictly tentative, and they were 
peddled about for months, and changed several times to see 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 525 

whether they would be acceptable or not, and every revised and 
corrected edition was marked "copyrighted." 

Some of the rules that were, we might say, self-evident, were 
not very objectionable, but others again were simply intended to 
give Woodburn and those who had their breeding stock from that 
establishment a great advantage over all other breeders. The 
selfish object of the fourth rule is palpable, as follows: "Any 
mare, the dam of any mare or stallion that has produced or sirod 
a horse, mare or gelding, with a record of two minutes and thirty 
seconds or better." 

To the original draft of six rules, "rule seven" was afterward 
added, which reads: "The full sister of any animal entered under 
rules one, two, three, and four." This was the capsheaf of ab- 
surdity, for it not only made the grandams of trotters standard 
trotting brood mares, but all their sisters also. This not only 
embraced a large number of running mares, genuine and bogus 
alike, in Kentucky, but it reached across the Atlantic and made 
one of the greatest of English dams of running horses, and all 
her famous sisters, standard trotting brood mares in America. 
Bonnie Scotland, the great racing sire, never was able to get a 
trotter except from old Waterwitch, and upon the strength of 
that scratch, his sisters and his mother and his aunts were all 
made standard trotters. No wonder this marvelously stupid 
production came to be known as the "Pinafore Standard." [A 
more extended review of the "Pinafore Standard" may be found 
in Wallace's Monthly for December, 18T9, page 831.] 

But when we come to consider the ultimate result intended to 
be reached, the scheme was not "marvelously stupid" — it was 
not the work of a fool, but of the other kind of fellow. The 
admission of the grandmothers and all their sisters was not 
specially intended to bring in the great English racing mare and 
all her sisters as standard-bred American trotters, but it was in- 
tended to bring in a great host of Kentucky running-bred mares 
that never could trot a mile in four minutes, and place them on 
an exact equality of rank with mares that had records of 2:20 or 
less. This would not only place Kentucky away ahead of the 
North in the length of her lines of inheritance, but would place 
Woodburn away above all competitors, either North or South, and 
with a little help of the Edgar-Bruce type, we would soon have 
had "twelfth dam, fifteenth dam/' etc., not one of them named 
and not one of them honest. Great local, and especially personal, 



526 THE HORSE OF AMERICA, 

advantages were to accrue, and the theory that Kentucky run- 
ning blood was not the best trotting blood in the world was to be 
smashed, and here we reach "the milk in the coco^nut." So 
far as we can understand the conditions as they then existed and 
so far as we can analyze the facts developed, this seems to be a 
fair interpretation of the impelling motive. In an unfortunate 
hour I took up this bantling of the young manager and exposed 
its absurdities, addressing the exposure to a highly esteemed 
personal friend whose name was connected with the movement, 
and just as soon as the gentlemen interested could be got to- 
gether, every vestige of the "Pinafore" features was eliminated, 
the poor old grandmothers and their sisters being ruthlessly 
turned out in the cold. This was the first set-back which Mr. 
Brodhead received in his enterprise, which was to accomplish so 
much for Woodburn, and which ended so disastrously. 

There was another feature embraced in the "Pinafore," and 
protected by the same "copyright," that was of special signifi- 
cance. It was provided that time made in a public trial, against 
the watch, should be accepted as of equal value with time made 
in a race with other horses. It is not worth while to stop to con- 
sider the question as to whether these two kinds of performance 
are of equal merit, and should receive equal honor, for every 
honest man will call such a claim a bald absurdity on its face. 
Then why has Woodburn, from time immemorial, it will be 
asked, always refused to enter a colt in a stake or start one 
against others? If you ask the manager he will tell you that Mr. 
Alexander, the owner, is opposed to racing in all its forms. Then 
why does Woodburn, in one form or other, hold so much stock 
in the Kentucky Breeders' Association, one of the most notorious 
gambling concerns in the whole country? We will not press this 
question too closely. There can be no shadow of doubt, there- 
fore, that this feature of the "Pinafore" was the special product 
of the mind of the manager at Woodburn, for no one of the other 
gentlemen would be willing to own it. 

The quasi-organization from which, nominally, the "Pina- 
fore Standard" emanated consisted of the five gentlemen follow- 
ing: Lucas Brodhead, Henry C. McDowell, Eichard S. Veech, 
James C McFerran, and Colonel Eichard West. The names of 
these five gentlemen when appended to any matter connected 
with their enterprise and given to the public had no rank assigned 
to them, except "Committee on Eules." This implied that 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 537 

there was an organization behind them that had appointed them 
to this duty, but there never was even a shadow of such an or- 
ganization. Mr. Brodhead was manager at Woodburn and am- 
bitious to control the trotting pedigrees of the whole country, 
and for the methods employed the reader is referred to page 430 
of this volume. Mr. McDowell is simply Mr. Brodhead's echo. 
In December, 1877, he attended the annual meeting of the Na- 
tional Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, and out of com- 
pliment to Kentucky he was elected president. He was about 
the city two or three days, and before he left for home he resigned 
without ever intimating any reason why he resigned. Mr. Veech 
is a man of undoubted integrity and plenty of brains, and was 
identified with the Breeders' Association from the start. Mr. 
McFerran and Colonel West are both dead, and while it was not 
my privilege to know them intimately, I knew enough of them 
to trust them as honorable and honest men. Not long after the 
appearance of the original suggestion in the Monthly, as given 
above, that a standard of qualifications for admission to registra- 
tion was of paramount importance, and that the preparation of 
such a standard was in the special province of the National Asso- 
ciation of Trotting Horse Breeders, Manager Brodhead caught 
the idea and the situation, and with Mr. McDowell hurried away 
to spend a. night with Mr. Veech, near Louisville, and thus fore- 
stall the action the Breeders' Association might take in the 
premises. They were all of one mind as to the importance of 
keeping Kentucky in the foremost position as a breeding State, 
but they were not all of one mind as to the means best adapted 
to that end. Mr. Veech was very clear and pronounced in his 
views that the way to breed the trotter was to go to the trotter 
and not to the runner, but what Brodhead said McDowell said, 
and that left him in the minority. Seated around a table, each 
with a copy of Wallace's Monthly containing the table of 2:30 
trotters under their sires, they commenced forming some rules. 
With "'The Great Table" before them they could not fail to strike 
the self-evident requirements of a standard, and two or three of 
their rules were very good, but as a matter of course the scheme 
of the majority to get in all the running-bred mares possible and 
enter them as standard trotting mares had to prevail. Hence 
the provision for admitting the grandams. Imported Bonnie 
Scotland was kept many years in the trotting latitudes, and just 
got one trotter and no more at any rate of speed, hence he was a 



528 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

standard horse according to this scheme, and his dam. Queen 
Mary, in England, was a standard trotting brood mare. Now if 
the dam thus became a standard trotting mare, why should not 
lago, his sire, become a standard trotting sire? This would have 
been too glaring and open, and would have been ridiculed as an 
absurdity by everybody. The trick had to be carried through 
quietly or it could not succeed. At a later period the sisters of 
all the standard mares were made standard, and then came the 
very appropriate and expressive title of the "Pinafore Standard," 
for it literally embraced "his sisters and his mother and his 
aunts." This scheme would have admitted a vast herd of so-called 
trotting mares in Kentucky that had no trotting inheritance, had 
never trotted themselves, and never produced a trotter. This 
part of the scheme was certainly not the work of the "Commit- 
tee on Rules," but the work of an individual for the purpose of 
carrying out a selfish and inadmissible scheme to promote 
local and personal interests. When the exposure of this scheme 
came out Woodburn, with all its influence in Kentucky, could 
not stand against it an hour, and every "Pinafore" feature was 
promptly eliminated. 

When the processes of emendation and change in the "Pina- 
fore," and each change "copyrighted," were going forward, the 
views of the diiferent members of the "Committee on Eules" did 
not always harmonize, and when it came to the selection of a 
man to do the work, part of the committee insisted the work 
should be placed in the hands of John H. Wallace, and after 
some discussion a committee consisting of Mr. Brodhead and 
Mr. McDowell was deputed to tender this work to Mr. Wallace 
on such terms as would be equitable and Just. In due time a 
communication was received from these gentlemen, informing 
me of the business upon which they had been appointed and 
wishing to know for what compensation I would engage to com- 
pile the book, laying down the conditions upon which it must be 
done. Without having a copy of this correspondence before me 
I can only give the substance from memory. First, the copy- 
right was to be in the committee or some member of it; second, 
the compilations were to be as the committee directed; and third, 
the book was to be the property of the committee when com- 
pleted. This was a stunner, but I concluded to play out the role 
they had assigned me and see what they would do. In my reply 
I put the case substantially as follows: "Your proposed book. 



HOW THE TKOTTING HORSE IS BKED. 529 

if ever made, must be made almost, if not quite wholly, from the 
first three volumes of the "Trotting Register," and these volumes 
are carefully protected by copyright. I have spent several years 
of hard labor in compiling them, and a large amount of money 
in traveling over the country tracing and verifying the facts 
which they contain. You ask me, in effect, to take my three 
volumes and to skim all the cream out of them to make one 
volume for you. Now, before going an inch further, we must 
understand what you are willing to pay for my property, before 
I can entertain any proposition to dump it into the lap of your 
committee." Sometimes I have been disposed to lament my 
hard fate in coming so near the exalted position of "hired-man" 
to two such distinguished characters as Henry C. McDowell and 
Lucas Brodhead, but I missed it. To this letter I never received 
any reply, nor did these gentlemen ever make any report of their 
negotiations with me to the "Committee on Rules." 

The next news we had from the "Pinafore" was the announce- 
ment that the book would be compiled at Woodburn, by LeGrand 
Lucas, and on inquiry as to his capacity and knowledge of the 
subject it was learned that he was a young kinsman of Brod- 
head's, perhaps still in his "teens," who was employed there as a 
kind of clerk or bookkeeper. He was evidently an innocent lad, 
for he had been installed in his new office only a very few days 
when he wrote me for certain numbers of the Monthly, in dupli- 
cate. In reply I wrote him that eacli volume of the "Register" 
and each number of the Monthly was legally covered by copy- 
right and that I could not consent to his taking my property to 
make up his new book, and that he must do as I had done — com- 
mence at the beginning and hunt for himself. Poor boy, what 
could he do? If he were debarred from the use of the Wallace 
publications, where on the face of the globe could he get the 
information? If cribbing had to be done in order to carry out 
the scheme, it would be very indiscreet to do it under the very 
roof of Woodburn and under the supervision of its manager. 
Thus the work languished for months, and little or no progress 
was made. 

In Chicago there was one James H. Sanders, publishing a 
paper, whom I had known for years. He never had an idea of 
his own in the world, but he was one of the most notorious and 
shameless plagiarists that I have ever known. As an illustration 
of what I knew about him in this department of industry and 



530 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

thought, I will give a single example that will honestly represent- 
many others in my own experience. At one time he was em- 
ployed several months as editor of Wilkes' Spirit of» the Times, 
and during that time I wrote an article for that paper that had 
some pith and point in it, but I was afraid to send it for fear 
Sanders would steal it, so I called in a capable friend and told 
him the situation, had him read it carefully and make some notes 
of the order of thought that he might know it if he ever saw it 
again. The paper was then signed and sent forward. In two or 
three days I received an acknowledgment of the communication 
effusively thankful for the favor, remarking that by a singular 
coincidence our minds had been running in the same channel and 
that when my communication was received he already had an 
article in type taking the same view of the subject. When the 
paper came my friend looked it over and remarked "that man is 
nothing more than a shameless plagiarist." 

In a short time work on the book, if it were ever begun, came 
practically to an end for want of material, and this was probably 
brought about by a hint from the proprietor, Mr. Alexander, 
that Woodburn, with all its strength, could not afford to sacrifice 
its good name for honesty, by taking the property of another 
man, without his consent. At this juncture J. H. Sanders, of 
Chicago, wanted a Job, for ready money, and knowing the situa- 
tion in Kentucky, published an editorial going to prove that 
pedigrees could not be copyrighted, for they belonged to the own- 
ers of the horses, or some other such brainless argument as this. 
Brodhead and his echo saw in this the opportunity of their lives,. 
for Sanders wanted the Job, and if my work were to be appropriated 
they could blame it all on him. So they hied away to Chicago, and 
the three worthies, all fully inspired with the aniimis furandi, 
were not long in reaching an agreement. Sanders did not want 
any share in the book or in the profits it might yield, but he 
was ready to do the work for a fixed compensation, in cash, and 
to be free from all responsibility for damages or loss. The com- 
pensation, as represented by Sanders, was three thousand dollars. 
The negotiations were consummated, announced through the 
press with a brilliant flourish of trumpets, and the two gentle- 
men returned to Kentucky in high feather. Work on the com- 
pilation (?) was soon commenced, and, as related by an eye- 
witness, the methods were very simple and expeditious. Mr. 
Sanders sat at one side of a table with the three volumes of 



HOW THE TKOTTING HORSE IS BKED. 531. 

"Wallace's Trotting Register," and Wallace's Monthly open be- 
fore him, and as he read out the pedigrees in their alphabetical 
order, his clerk, on the opposite side of the table, wrote them 
down. In a very few weeks the work was done and Sanders put. 
his three thousand dollars in his pocket. Thus the clerk was paid,, 
his employers were in possession of his dishonest work, and J. H. 
Wallace was robbed of the labor of years, but the instinctive 
honesty of the public conscience had not yet been reckoned with. 
The book was published under the title of "The Breeder's 
Trotting Stud Book." The clerical work was well done, closely 
following the copyrighted sources from which it was drawn, so 
closely indeed as to furnish strong prima facie evidence that it 
was copied. But this feature of excellence, if that word can be 
applied to theft in any form, furnished literally hundreds of 
evidences, clear, unmistakable and conclusive, that from begin- 
ning to end it had been copied from the "Register" and the 
Monthly. Like all works of the kind, those volumes were not 
free from errors, the spelling of a name might be wrong, the 
initials of a name might have been misplaced or reversed, a date 
or a location may have been incorrect, and as all these errors were 
copied and not one of them corrected, and there were hundreds 
of them, each one stood up as a competent and undisputed wit- 
ness and told the story of the theft. But, knowing the character 
of the people with whom I had to deal, I Avas prompted to adopt 
the methods of the detective in using marked bills, and then 
finding those bills on the person of the culprit. Fortunately 
there was a very easy way of applying this effective and conclu- 
sive method and I adopted it. Instead of marking bills, I 
marked pedigrees, by inserting imaginary crosses. As an illus- 
tration, there was a horse in Delaware called Frank Pierce Jr. 
Nobody ever knew anything about the blood of his dam, and I 
supplied the place with "dam by Tom Titmouse, pacer," and 
then waited for my marked pedigrees to make their appearance. 
Nobody ever heard of a horse called "Tom Titmouse" in Dela- 
ware or any other country. In due time the book appeared and 
there my "marked bills" came to light in the possession of Lucas 
Brodhead and Henry C. McDowell. The piracy was a clean sweep 
and the evidence of it was just as complete as the depredation 
itself. As a matter of course I did not delay in raising the shout 
"stop thief," and after one or two broadsides from the Monthly 
giving the extent of the theft and examples of the evidence to- 



532 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

sustain the charge, the moral sense of the breeders of the whole 
country, including Kentucky, was aroused, and I was really sur- 
prised at the sudden death of the bantling and its burial out of 
sight, but still more surprised that no man opened his head in 
explanation or defense of the piracy, and thus was practically con- 
fessed the truth of all that was charged against them. It is said 
that Mr. Alexander, the proprietor of Woodburn, tightened the 
reins on his over-ambitious manager, at this point, and admon- 
ished him that his course had done great injury to the good name 
of Woodburn, and that he must change it, and not attempt any 
defense of Avhat he had done. Whether this really occurred or 
not I am not able to say, but it was just such a course as any 
wise employer would adopt toward a reckless employee whose 
course Avas destroying the good name of an establishment. It 
then appeared to be my duty to go forward and under a decree 
of the courts have this stolen property confiscated and destroyed, 
according to law, but as the bantling was already very dead and 
growing deader every day, with nothing left of it but a trace of 
Its putrescence in the nostrils of all honest men, I concluded that 
the game was not worth the candle. 

Among the amusing things that were developed in the progress 
of this controversy was Mr. Brodhead's peculiar views as to what 
"copyright" really meant. He got the idea of restricting admis- 
sion to the "Register" to animals possessing certain qualifica- 
tions from the Monthly, and he formulated this idea into five or 
six rules, expressed in eight or ten short printed lines and, as he 
claimed, c()[)yrighted this idea. He evidently seemed to think 
he had invented a rat-trap and got his patent on it. and that no 
man dare make any rules restricting registration, so long as he 
safely held the patent on his rat-trap. He could see no differ- 
ence between a patent right and a copyright. An "idea" cannot 
be copyrighted, no difference whether it be expressed in one 
printed line, or in a dozen. The copyright law is constructed 
for the special and only purpose of protecting the author in the 
results and products of his labor. The work of seeking, tracing 
and establishing the pedigrees of trotting horses had been pushed 
forward persistently, laboriously and expensively for more than 
twelve years, and it had grown into a vast accumulation of facts 
of imperishable value to the whole horse world, and every line 
of it was protected under the copyright law; but because it didn't 
conform to his "rat-trap" idea he seems to have persuaded him- 



HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 533 

self that it would be justifiable to hire and pay a man to transfer 
it from my possession to his own. 

During its very short life and while the memory of the book 
was retained in the recollections of the horsemen of that period, 
it was very generally, if not invariably, spoken of as "The Tom 
Titmouse Stud Book." It has already been suggested how this 
name would aptly fit in among my "marked bills," but the 
reason for it has not been made apparent. In Warren's romance 
called "Ten Thousand a Year," his "delectable," or to speak 
soberly, his "detestable" hero was named "Tittlebat Titmouse," 
and as one of the gentlemen involved in this controversy strongly 
reminded me of Warren's hero, by his arrogance and ignorance, 
I involuntarily wrote in the "marked bill" "dam by Tittlebat 
Titmouse;" but upon looking at it I concluded it was not good 
bait, for it was doubtful whether any man in the world who ever 
owned a horse would name him after so contemptible a character. 
Hence, to make it less conspicuous it was changed to read "dam 
by Tom Titmouse, pacer," and the bait was swallowed in a 
twinkling. The Kentucky scheme, from its very inception, had 
its motive in securing a local and personal advantage over the 
breeders of every other section of the country and hence the 
provisions of the "Pinafore" standard, from which the promoters 
were only driven by exposure and ridicule. The piracy was con- 
summated as proved by a hundred witnesses that will never die, 
and of which the "marked bill" element, such as "Tom Titmouse, 
pacer," is an unmistakable representative. With the inception 
and consummation both understood and named, how could we find 
another name so fit as "The Tom Titmouse Stud Book?" To 
this miglit be added, on an amended title-page: "Edited by a 
clerk employed by Lucas Brodhead and Henry C. McDowell of 
Kentucky." 

Some three or four years after the death and burial of the "Tom 
Titmouse" book and when its odoriferous memory had become 
less offensive, another effort was made to get control of the regis- 
tration business, by the same parties in Kentucky. Mr. Brod- 
head did not appear prominently in this move, but worked 
through his echo, McDowell. The plan was to present a monster 
petition to the National Trotting Association, composed chiefly 
of track owners and track followers, to establish a trotting regis- 
ter. This petition purported to be from breeders, but in fact it 
embraced all the "swipes" and stable-boys about Lexington and 



534 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

Woodburn, I was told, and there were very few actual breeders 
in the list, and that few were men who were trying to breed trot- 
ters from runners. The movement was inspired and engineered 
in good degree from Woodburn, and Brodhead's friends were at 
work in all directions securing the names of the "rag, tag and 
bobtail" whose names appeared on the petition, and a very great 
noise was raised about what was going to be done. Whether the 
association took any action on the petition, or what it was, I have 
no recollection, but whatever the disposition made of the peti- 
tion, it never was heard of again. To the reader not familiar 
with the condition of things in Kentucky at that time, these 
persistent and renewed attempts to get control of the registra- 
tion of trotting' horses can hardly be comprehended. They did 
not grow out of ruffled tempers merely, as the result of friction, 
but out of strictly business considerations. Kentucky had a 
great variety of brood mares from which they were trying to 
breed trotters, and practically every one of them was tricked out 
with more or less running blood as tail-pieces to their pedigrees, 
while others were paraded with pedigrees showing a dozen or 
more successive crosses by thoroughbred horses, and not one of 
them with a name, a history or a breeder. There were many 
purchasers flocking to Kentucky with more money than knowl- 
edge for the purpose of buying a few animals to serve as the 
nucleus for a breeding stud, and it was no uncommon thing for 
such purchasers to estimate the value of a pedigree by its length. 
When the purchaser got home with his stock, his next step was to 
send them to me for registration, and here came in the "business" 
consideration. The pedigree having reached the office of the 
"Eegister," unless it were already known to me, every cross had to 
be established circumstantially and specifically before it could be 
accepted, and at the precise point where reasonable information 
failed the pedigree was cut off. The purchaser then goes back 
upon the seller, and there the trouble begins. He writes me an 
indignant letter. "You're interfering with my business, sah; 
that pedigree is just as I got it from Colonel Jones, sah; and he's 
a gentleman, sah." It was very seldom, indeed, that a man of 
this type could be mollified by assuring him that all pedigrees 
were judged by the same rule and requirement, whether they 
came from Maine or California or Kentucky. He generally re- 
mained an enemy to the "Register" because "it interfered with his 
business." From early in the century, three or four counties 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 535 

■out of about one hundred and twenty in Kentucky bred running 
horses and grades and raced them, but no records were kept of 
their breeding and nobody knows with certainty to-day anything 
about the more remote crosses. For a time the union of two or 
three trotting horses upon the top of a line of nameless dams ex- 
tending ten or fifteen generations was looked upon as the perfec- 
tion of a trotting pedigree. This notion, foolish as it was, gave 
Kentucky a great advantage over the breeders of all other sec- 
tions of the country, and every exposure, with the evidence, that 
in nine cases out of ten these lines of nameless dams were in 
whole or in part pure fictions, was cutting the ground from under 
their supposed superiority in the breeding of their trotters. 
Under the arguments and illustrations of the Monthly, supported 
by the incontrovertible statistics of the ''Year Book," the Ken- 
tucky cry for "more running blood in the trotter," was silenced 
as the child of ignorance and prejudice, and instead of looking 
for pedigrees tracing back to Godolphin Arabian, everybody began 
to look for pedigrees that traced to individuals and families dis- 
tinguished for producing trotters, no difference what blood they 
possessed. Here the public mind reached the truth, and in 
grasping it the boasted predominance of Kentucky was crushed, 
and producing trotting blood was again placed on an equality in 
all parts of the land. The loss of the pretensions of one section 
could not be of any specific pecuniary advantage to any other 
section, but the establishing of the truth was of inestimable ad- 
vantage to all. The loss of mere "pretentions" would not, in 
ordinary affairs, be considered a very great loss, but in this in- 
stance it was looked upon as a grievous wrong, because it inter- 
fered with their "business." Every slippery fellow who failed to 
pass a bogus pedigree complained that it interfered with his 
"business." Every gang of cheats that got together and hired 
the use of a track for a few days for the purpose of giving their 
horses bogus records, when detected, cried out vigorously that 
this was interfering with their "business." Besides these, there 
were scores, perhaps hundreds, of others, ready for some such 
game to cheat the public, but when they learned the ordeal was 
severe, their courage failed and they contented themselves by 
threatening the "Register" for interfering with their "business." 
Here was an army of jockeys and cheats, and all they needed to 
make their numbers formidable was a leader with courage and 
money, and whose "business" was their own, to seize regis- 



636 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

tration and thus recoup the losses they had sustained in their 
''business." 

In considering the conspiracy that resulted in the sale and 
transfer of the Wallace publications to the American Trotting Reg- 
ister Association, which means simply Lucas Brodhead, there are 
some antecedent conditions connected with these publications 
that need a brief explanation. The first volume of "Wallace's 
American Trotting Register" was published in this city in 1871 
and the second in 1874, An office was opened in this city in 
1875 and the first number of Wallace's Monthly was issued in 
October of that year. The National Association of Trotting 
Horse Breeders was organized December 20, 1876. The attend- 
ance was large and many of the States were represented by men 
of influence and standing. Mr. Charles Backman was elected 
president, and L. D. Packer secretary. From the favor with 
which the idea of a national organization was received and from 
the character of the men participating in it, I voluntarily and 
without judicial advice placed in the association the authority to 
appoint annually a Board of Censors to examine and decide all 
questions relating to disputed pedigrees sent for registration. 
The plan worked smoothly and satisfactorily for several years, 
in some of which there was not a single case to be examined. My 
publications were soon past the critical point, and they seemed to 
grow from their inherent strength, and not from pushing or ad- 
vertising. The Breeders' Association seemed to take the opposite 
chute, and after three or four years it became merely a name. 
At first there was trouble in finding a man to take the presidency, 
but at last a rich dry goods merchant was found who was willing 
to take the presidency, and add five hundred dollars a year to 
some stake for the honor conferred; and the secretary, L. D. 
Packer, was the mere satellite of the president, and was willing 
to give two weeks' work every year for the privilege of drawing 
a thousand dollars a year from the treasury. The annual meet- 
ings became a mere formality, with an attendance of three or 
four and the two officers, who seemed to re-elect each other year 
after year, until the association was finally buried somewhere out 
in Michigan, I think, and the money that had accumulated in 
the treasury was, on his petition, donated to the secretary in 
consideration of his valuable services for so many years in carrying 
the association from the cradle to the tomb. 

Owing to my relations to the Breeders' Association, I felt that 



HOW THE TROTTING HOKSE IS BRED. 537 

I was in honor bound to maintain its good name in the minds of 
the people, while every publication in the whole country was 
laughing at it, and that this was my duty as well as my interest 
until the time came for a final separation from it. True, when 
I made these efforts to uphold it I had to put my tongue in my 
nheek, for I knew that its management, like "the Old Man of 
the Sea," was riding it to death. As my business continued to 
grow and prosper, I began to consider the propriety of forming a 
joint stock company of breeders, to own and control the property 
absolutely when I was ready to retire. Greatly to my surprise 
this proposition gave oilense to the two gentlemen who managed 
the association, for I had not alluded to that in any possible 
manner. When explained to me it became perfectly plain that 
the offense was in the fact that making a legal corporation to 
own and control the property would leave no "position" for the 
president, no salary for the secretary and no further need for the 
N. A. of T. H. B. 

The Wallace Trotting Register Company, in due time, was in- 
corporated under the laws of the State of "N^ew York, and com- 
menced business October 1, 1889. The publications of the com- 
pany were the "Register," the Montlily and the "Year Book." 
The capital stock of the company was fixed at one hundred thou- 
sand dollars, and as work came pouring in upon us more rapidly 
than we could handle it, labor became a burden and I had no 
time to distribute this stock among the breeders of every State, 
as I intended. This was the condition of things in the office in 
the following spring when, to my horror, I discovered I had been 
robbed of something over fifty-four thousand dollars and the thief 
escaped to Cuba. The blow was a stunner, and messages of 
sympathy came pouring in from all quarters, with many tenders 
of pecuniary assistance all of which were thankfully acknoAvledged, 
but all tenders of assistance were declined. 

The capitalization at one hundred thousand dollars, and the 
robbery of fifty-four thousand dollars, and the company still not 
crushed, gave Mr. Brodhead a new view of the possibilities of the 
future, and inspired him with a new hope that he might yet reach 
the ambition of his life and gain control of the registration of all 
the trotting pedigrees of the country. Without much violence 
to the processes of Brodhead's mind we can imagine the way in 
which he reasoned out the problem. "This has become a valua- 
ble property and is bound to be still more valuable," he doubtless 



538 THE HORSE OF AMERICA, 

reasoned, ''and it is possible it can be bought, but if bought it must 
be done before that stock is scattered among the breeders of the 
different States. There are Russell Allen and Malcolm Forbes 
and a whole lot of rich fellows just coming into the trotting 
horse business and I can show them that this property would be 
a good investment. With the money in one hand and the bluff 
of starting an opposition Register in the other, it is possible the 
property might be got for something like its value." He next 
probably reasoned: "The first thing to consider here, is how to 
make that bluff sufficiently imposing and effective, in an authori- 
tative way; and shall it be a mass meeting or a delegate meeting, 
and where shall it be held? I have seen Packer and he evi- 
dently wants to know what there is in it for him and Mali, in case 
they agree to call a National convention. They want to perpetu- 
ate their offices in their present so-called National Association. 
If it should be a mass convention, and held at Chicago, I could 
send up a few carloads of farmers' sons from around here and 
every one of them would swear he was a breeder. If it should 
be a delegate convention from State Breeders' Associations, there 
are several States that have no such associations, but I could get 
a few friends to organize for the purpose of sending delegates. 
The horse papers would be a unit on our side, for they have been 
'set on' so often and so hard that they would like to see the old 
bear superseded. Beside this, every one of those papers has at 
least the one man who is competent to succeed Wallace, and 
every editor who has been in the business six months thinks he 
is fully qualified for that place. But the real roar of the shout- 
ing would come from the angry men whom Wallace has disap- 
pointed in refusing to accept their pedigrees or their perform- 
ances because they were irregular. These men are very numer- 
ous and we must have as many of them present as possible. I 
think this plan will work," he doubtless reasoned with himself, 
"if we can only keep Wallace in the dark till we get things fixed, 
and to throw him off his guard I will send him three or four 
pedigrees to register." 

Thus the plan of the conspiracy, with all the elements to be 
employed, were evidently matured in Mr. Brodhead's mind. 
There were two points about which he was specially solicitous. 
The first was that I should be kept wholly in the dark as to his 
movements and purposes, and the second was some apparently 
official authority for calling a convention at Chicago that would 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 539 

be of a nominally "national" character. On invitation Secretary- 
Packer visited Woodburn, and for a promised consideration it 
was all arranged that the President and Secretary of the N. A. of 
T. H. B. would call a convention. With the initial step thus 
safely provided for, Mr. Brodhead was everywhere, east and west, 
north and south, beating up recruits. In a short time, evidently 
by preconcerted arrangement, there was an unusual number of 
horsemen in town, some of them very rich men, while the greater 
number were blowers of the Dr. Day type with a grievance. The 
horsemen were hustled together by Secretary Packer, in what 
was called an impromptu meeting, and there President Mali, 
after some apparent hesitation, fulfilled his part of the agree- 
ment and called the convention at Chicago, and thus Mr. Brod- 
head secured his share — and we will see how the other side fared 
further on. 

When the convention assembled at Chicago it was indeed a 
motley mass. President Mali took his place as president, and 
called the convention to order, and Secretary Packer took his 
place as secretary. This, as I understand, was not by the choice of 
the convention, but by virtue of their positions in the N. A. of T. 
n. B. It was eventually determined that the meeting should be 
composed of delegates from State associations, and when the as- 
sociations were called, several of them had never been heard of 
before and never have been heard of since. They were bogus 
associations, and were gotten up especially for the occasion. 
Some of the delegates bore names that never had been heard of 
in the office of the ''Register," and it may be inferred they never 
bred a standard horse. The names of others, again, were well 
known in the office from their efforts to get spurious and un- 
known crosses accepted. All these men were anxious for a new 
management. One man whom I had discharged from my office 
a few weeks before represented a New England State. He was 
guilty of a flagrant attempt at deception. He was a fawning 
sycophant, always laughing at his own supposed wit, and he was 
known in the office as "Uriah Heep." The man who domi- 
nated the convention from beginning to end had not been ap- 
pointed a delegate by his own association. The whole thing, as 
a convention, was about as hollow a sham as was ever enacted in 
Chicago. Next behind the gentlemen who by courtesy may be 
designated as delegates, sat the moneyed men who were anxiously 
looking for a good investment for some of their loose funds, and 



540 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

Brodhead had told them this property was paying twenty-five 
per cent, on a capitalization of one hundred thousand dollars, and 
he thought it could be made to pay more. Like many other 
fools, they thought it was a machine that when fired up in the 
morning would run itself. Next to the rich men sat a good 
isprinkling of farmers' sons, some carloads of whom had been 
brought from Kentucky, and all ready to swear they were breed- 
ers. As Brodhead explained this incident to a gentleman who 
stated it to me: "If there was any attempt to pack the convention 
he was ready to do some packing himself, with these young men 
he had brought from Kentucky." 

On the outside circle there was a large number of young men 
and some older ones watching the proceedings with great in- 
tensity. They were restless, and some of them looked huugry, 
and every one of them was looking for a place if the purchase 
Avent through. One had a copy of the Bungtown Bugle in his 
pocket containing a rej)ort of the racing at the last county fair, 
written by him, and he thought that was sufficient evidence that 
he was qualified to take charge of the Monthly. Another had 
made, with his own hands, as he asserted, a tabulated pedigree on 
a large scale and shaded the letters beautifully and artistically 
with pokeberry juice; and what evidence could be more satisfac- 
tory that he was qualified to take charge of the department of 
registration? Every one of them seemed to think that there, 
would be a good place for him in the new deal, and hence his 
•enthusiasm at every incident that seemed to point in that direc- 
tion. Thus the little cormorants as well as the big cormorants 
were all anxious for the prey. 

While the soreheads were wrangling over how best to get hold 
of my property, and what they would do with it Avhen they got 
it, I had several hours in the privacy of my ov/n apartments to 
look over all the conditions of the situation, and the conclusions 
I then reached I have never had reason to change. It, there- 
fore, may be of interest to all to know just what I thought at 
that crucial period, and I will give these thoughts as contem- 
poraneous with the event: 

"This meeting is a miserable sham, but the action of Mali and 
Packer has given it a pseudo-type of regularity as a national 
convention of horsemen, and this idea of 'regularity' will carry 
weight with many who know nothing of the bottom facts. 

"The members of the press will, substantially, be a unit against 



HOW THE TROTTING HORSE IS BRED. 541 

me, and ring all the changes on 'the National convention' at. 
Chicago, and labor to make it appear as an uprising of the horse- 
men of the whole country against me. 

"The meeting is packed by Brodhead with his own satellites, 
whose expenses he has paid, and embraces a good many rogues 
who have failed in passing upon me dishonest pedigrees and 
spurious records. Besides these there are several men here, and 
very active, whose names have never been heard of before in the 
horse world. 

"Taking these elements together, they are in numbers more^ 
formidable than dangerous, but when led by Brodhead, with 
what they consider a fair price in one hand and a club in the- 
other, with the demand 'take the price or we'll take the property,' 
the occasion becomes serious. 

"The latter alternative means a battle that may last ten years. 
Ten years ago these same people employed a man who purloined 
my literary property and it was found in their possession. The 
evidence of the piracy was so clear that it never was denied. 

"Have I time enough, am I strong enough, am I young enough 
to enter upon this long battle? Ten years ago I was robbed of 
my property, but I was then vigorous and strong; one year ago 
another thief robbed me of my money and it was a terrific and 
lasting strain upon my vitality. 

"The days of my years number nearly threescore and ten, so 
there is no time to enter ujDon the uncertainties 'of the law's 
delays.' From overwork and the anxieties growing out of family 
afflictions and the robbery, my health is shattered. It is time, 
therefore, that I should seek to rest rather than to struggle. 

"And what about the work to which I have devoted the best, 
years of a long life? Will it be attacked? Certainly it will be 
attacked for the reason that it does not suit Woodburn. Will it 
be overthrown? No, the laws of nature cannot be overthrown. 
The trotter can come only from the trotter and nobody but an 
ignoramus or a fool can doubt the truth of this declaration. 
The experiences of every year, of every track, and in every race 
confirm this central truth and will continue to do so as long as 
the world stands." 

From the above reasonings and conclusions, when the offer of 
one hundred and thirty thousand dollars was made, in a business 
form, it was accepted. 

When the property was transferred it was on the individual 



542 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

and joint responsibility of some half a dozen rich men, and they 
were as gleeful and happy over their investment as though they 
had obtained a gold mine for a song. But, while these men were 
rejoicing over their acquisition, there were many others cursing 
the deception that had been practiced upon them by promising 
them places and perquisites and, in short, whatever they wanted 
in order to secure their adherence to the conspiracy. Of all this 
numerous class, Messrs. Mali and Packer had so little sense as to 
make the nature and terms of their agreement public, namely, 
that they were to be clothed with the power to annually appoint 
the Board of Censors for the new organization. Poor fools! they 
didn't know Brodhead. For a consideration of place they had 
betrayed a trust to him that as honorable men they should have 
sacredly guarded, and the more they complained the more bit- 
terly they were condemned by all right-thinking men. Hence, 
after they had served his purpose he kicked them aside as he 
would an old shoe, and thus he punished the traitors Avith whom 
he had dealt. When the multitude of writers, statisticians, etc., 
who had received private assurances of "something equally as 
good" in the new deal, saw the fate of Mali and Packer, they 
had sense enough to keep their mouths shut. A man who knew 
anything about the trotting families and their lines of descent 
was not the kind of man that Mr. Brodhead wanted to put in 
charge of registration. The only man who could suit Mr. Brod- 
head was the man who would implicitly and without doubt follow 
his instructions, right or wrong. When Mr. J. H. Steiner was 
appointed Registrar it was wholly evident that this was the pur- 
pose of the proprietor, for of all the men in my knowledge, in 
any way connected with trotting horse interests, Mr. Steiner 
seems to be the most profoundly ignorant of horse history and 
liorse lineage, and till this day he does not seem to have learned 
anything thereof. 

At this point the public confidence received a shock from 
which it has never recovered, and never will recover. From that 
day till the present the estimate of value of the publications 
of the company, in the minds of breeders, has been on the 
"down grade," and coupled with this is the ever-obtruding doubt 
as to whether these publications are managed for the advantage 
of the general breeding public, or for the little clique of which 
Woodburn is the center. The lack of knowledge displayed has 
resulted in a profound disgust. This has been shown most con- 



HOW THE TROTTING HOKSE IS BRED. 543 

clusively in the fate of the poor old MontJily. It started out 
under its new owners to controvert breeding history and breeding 
law in which the public had been thoroughly and conscientiously 
indoctrinated. The sham pretense of using the title Wallace's 
Monthly instead of Brodhead' s Monthly was "too thin" to deceive 
any one except the most ignorant. The labored productions of 
the weaklings hired to overthrow the truth only tended to deepen 
the disgust. The price was lowered as an inducement to sup- 
port, but nobody wanted the miserable thing about his house, 
and thus it died without a tear except from the eyes of the rich 
fools who put their money into it supposing it would live and 
prosper in the hands of ignorant and incompetent men. 

It is natural for the rich men who put their money so gleefully 
into this publishing enterprise, at the instigation of Mr. Brodhead, 
to try to get some of it back before the final smash, which is evi- 
dently not far removed, and hence the ignorant and blundering 
emasculation of the Year Book, in order to reduce its cost. 
"The Great Table," as it was called for years, embraces all 
others, and all others are merely subsidiary to that. This table 
should be restored in its entirety, for it is worth the whole of 
them and double as many more. With every other table thrown 
out and this one restored, complete, the breeders would be con- 
tent. The Year Book — the great instructor of the past — I have 
just learned is no longer published for the breeders or for the 
press, but for the tracks. The operation is explained as fol- 
lows: Every year the secretaries of the National and the Ameri- 
can Trotting Associations send out by express a lot of blank 
books, blanks, etc., to each track in good standing and in this 
outfit for the year is a copy of the Year Book, which is charged 
at the long price. The tables of fastest records, I am told, are 
quite carefully made in the offices of these associations them- 
selves, and the book is thus made a convenience for the tracks. 
Thus, by this system of forced loans on the tracks, the Year 
Book is kept alive. This method of financing the company will 
not last long. 

A different method has been adopted in order to secure funds 
from registration. Money for registration must come from the 
breeders themselves directly, and there is no way of forcing them 
to put up through the manipulation of intermediary officials. 
Hence the plan has been tried of scaring them into it, but with 
what success I am not informed. At the annual meeting in 



544 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

April, 1895, 1 think it was, a committee was appointed, consist- 
ing of Messrs. Brodhead and Boyle, if I remember, to consider 
and report to the next meeting amendments to the standard ad- 
vancing the requirements for registration, and everybody was 
advised to hurry in their pedigrees or they might be excluded. 
At the meeting in 1896 the committee did not report, but Mr. 
Brodhead reported in a series of resolutions, in which the num- 
ber of standard dams was advanced, which suited Woodburn 
exactly, but there was no advance in the time to be made, and 
the tin-cup record against time was carefully protected. The 
resolutions were adopted unanimously, and went before the 
breeding public as the new advanced standard that would be de- 
cided at the next annual meeting. From time to time the breed- 
ers were duly informed of the proposed advance and cautioned 
many times to get in while they could. The annual meeting in 
April, 1897, came, and instead of a rush of breeders interested one 
way or another in the proposed advance, the same stereotyped 
half a dozen men were there who had been manipulating the 
scare for two years, and not one of them, even Brodhead himself, 
voted for the advance. This is no advance at all, in a practical 
sense, and would accomplish nothing, and would do no good to 
anybody except Woodburn or some other establishment that like 
her has been breeding trotters for forty years. It was merely in- 
tended for a scare, and it failed under such circumstances as to 
fully disclose the object in jjlacing it before the breeders. The 
scare is all out of this kind of humbug and deception, and now 
what? When the standard was adopted on the basis of 2:30 that 
rate of speed was sixteen seconds behind the fastest record then 
made. To-day if the standard were placed at 2:30 it would be 
about sixteen seconds slower than the fastest time now on record. 
But this real advance, which is imperatively demanded by all the 
considerations of philosophy and progress, will never be made so 
long as the standai'd is under the control of Woodburn. The 
reason for this is made obvious by reference to page 504, etc. 
Mr. Brodhead's ambition has been fully gratified, he is in full and 
absolute control of the registration of the country, he has com- 
pletely demonstrated his incompetency for such a position, and 
he has the satisfaction of knowing, if it be a satisfaction, that no 
sensible business man on the face of the globe would be willing 
to pay ten per cent, of the cost for the property he now controls.. 



HOW THE TROTTIXG HORSE IS BRED. 545 

And who will say this is not a righteous retribution for the disrep- 
utable means employed, first and last, to obtain this control? 

My life-work in building up a breed of trotting horses and 
thereby adding many millions to the value of the horse stock of 
the country had been more effective than I had even hoped for. 
I knew that I had laid the foundation on the bed-rock of truth, 
and I knew that the superstructure had been honestly erected, 
but I did not know what a deep root my teachings had taken in 
the minds of all intelligent and thinking men. In transferring 
the property the chief source of my unhappiness was in the 
thought that heaven an^ earth would be moved to destroy what 
I had done and overthrow Avhat I had taught. But I had 
builded wiser and stronger than I knew, and when the "feather- 
weights'* were hired to pull the house down and tear up the very 
roots of the seed I had planted, the people would not listen to 
them and nobody would read their vapid utterances. And thus 
the effort ended in the death of the Monthly. The harvest of 
thought was much nearer the reaping time when the transfer was 
made than I had supposed, and since then it has been ripening 
and ripening, and to-day if any man were heard advocating more 
running blood in the trotter, he would with very great unanimity 
be pronounced either an ignoramus or a fool, on that question at 
least. 

But, much as I disliked to surrender my life-work to a man 
whose moral fiber I had tested and found brittle, the transfer 
was really "a blessing in disguise." It gave me rest, it gave me 
health, and it gave me leisure to prosecute the study of the horse 
of history in fields hitherto untrodden. The years thus employed 
in digging after the very roots of history in the libraries, at home 
and abroad, have glided by, affording a continuous enjoyment in 
the discovery of many things that are very old and yet entirely 
new to this generation. Very often, when the work went slowly, 
I thought I could again hear the quiet, sympathetic voice of a 
Pennsylvania Friend gently prompting me with the remark, 
"Thee should remember that thee is no longer a young man." 
And now that my long-promised and pleasant undertaking is 
completed, it is my very earnest wish that the thousand friends 
who have been waiting for it may enjoy the pleasant surprises it 
will furnish them as much as I have enjoyed their exhumation 
from the archives of long-buried centuries. 



APPENDIX 

HISTOKY OF THE WALLACE PUBLICATIONS. 

BY A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR. 

Mr. Wallace's early life and education — Removal to Iowa, 1845 — Secretary 
Iowa State Board of Agriculture — Begins work, 1856, on " Wallace's 
American Stud Book," published 1867 — Method of gathering pedigrees — 
Trotting Supplement — Abandons Stud Book, 1870, and devotes exclusive 
attention to trotting literature — "American Trotting Register," Vol. I., 
published in 1871 — Vol. II. follows in 1874 — The valuable essay on breed- 
ing the lorerunner of present ideas — Standard adopted 1879 — Its history — 
Battles for control of the " Register" — Wallace's Monthly founded 1875 — 
Its character, purposes, history, writers, and artists — " Wallace's Year 
Book " founded 1885 — Great popularity and value — Transfer of the Wal- 
lace publications, and their degeneration. 

The history of the series of works known as the Wallace publications, 
even in the brief form here contemplated, involves in a large degree the 
biography of Mr. Wallace. It is indeed more than the sketch of a long 
and indefatigably industrious life-work. It involves as well, in the forty 
years of creative labor, the development of a great productive industry, 
and of a distinct branch of literature. Mr, Wallace's labors in the field 
of gathering and systematizing American horse iiistory began at a day 
when there was no breed of trotters, or no trotting literature. When he 
laid aside active work there were both, well established and clearly defined 
factors in the nation's progress, and in all the years from the commence- 
ment he was the central figure in the work of establishing a breed of trot- 
ters, and incora.jarably the clearest and strongest force in the direction 
and upbuilding of a trotting literature. That is the simple truth of his- 
tory, which the verdict of time will render it puerile to deny. 

John H. Wallace was born August 16, 1832, and reared on a farm 
in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. As a boy he evinced no par- 
ticular liking for farm work, but had a great fondness for reading. He 
was educated chiefly at the Frankfort Springs Academy, where he was 
prepared to enter the junior class at college. There occurred a little 
incident at this time that illustrates how seemingly slight a thing may 
change the current of a life. The then member of Congress for that dis- 
trict, Mr. Dickey, a scholarly man, advised Professor Nicholson, of the 
Academy, that if he had a young man in his institution whom he could 
recommend, he (Mr. Dickey) would appoint him a cadet to West Point, 
Mr. Wallace was selected, provided his father's consent was forthcoming. 
When Mr. Wallace, Sr., was approached on the subject his reply was. 



548 THE HOESE OF AMEKICA. 

" John, I think there is some better employment in the world for you than 
studying the most approved methods of killing men " — and that ended the 
West Point incident. Young Mr. Wallace, about this time, became 
alarmed, however, at his then persistently delicate health, and decided to 
seek an outdoor life rather than one of study. In 1845 he married Miss 
Ellen Ewing (who died in 1891), of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and 
settled on a farm at Muscatine, Iowa. Iowa was then a new country, and 
Mr. Wallace did much in the way of organizing the industrial and educa- 
tional interests of the State. There, as related below, he began work in 
the line in which he became famous. With an invalid wife he returned to 
Allegheny in 1872; andin 1875in company with the late Benjamin Singerly, 
of Pittsburg, started Wallace^s Monthly at New York, which has been his 
home ever since. Mr. Wallace in 1893 married Miss Ellen Wallace Veech, 
a niece of the first Mrs. Wallace ; and since his retirement from active busi- 
ness he has spent his time, at home and abroad, chiefly in prosecuting 
investigations into the horse history of the remote periods, the results of 
which are seen in this, his crowning life-work. 

We will endeavor here to sketch, in the abstract, the history of Mr. 
Wallace's publications to as great a degree as possible separately, though 
they cannot be entirely separated. The " Trotting Register" was an out- 
growth of the "Stud Book," and Wallace's Monthly ?a\6. the "Year Book" 
outgrowths of the "Register," and both auxiliary thereto. The career 
and usefulness of all were intertwined, yet each had its own peculiar mis- 
sion, and to that extent their histories will be kept distinct. 

" Wallace's American Stud Book." 

During the early "fifties" Mr. Wallace, then in the prime of early man- 
hood, was Secretary of the Iowa State Board of Agriculture, and as such had 
much to do with the management of State fairs. He was thus frequently 
called upon for information about the pedigrees of animals, and the need 
of an authority on horse pedigrees was pointedly and constantly forced 
upon his attention. If the pedigree of a cow was asked for he had only 
to turn to the "American Herd Book" to find it, but when the breeding 
of a horse was wanted there was no authority to which to turn. Mr. Wal- 
lace had been dabbling more or less in such horse literature as there was 
at that day, and in 1856 began collecting information with the ultimate 
purpose of publishing a stud book of thoroughbred horses — for the thor- 
oughbred was then here, as in England, supreme as the only horse of 
literature. He already possessed certain of the publications that were the 
best horse authorities of the day— a file of the Spirit of the Times, Skin- 
ner's American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, and a number 
of volumes of the "English Stud Book," and English Sporting Magazine. 
Added to these, later, were other sources of information and misinformation 
most notable in this latter class being the alleged " Stud Book " published 
bv Patrick Nesbitt Edgar, of North Carolina, in 1833— an utterly unreliable 



APPENDIX. 549 

work, but the only American stud book in existence prior to Wallace's. 
From these, and every other available source, Mr. Wallace began to glean 
and systematically compile the pedigrees of thoroughbred and so-called 
thoroughbred horses. Of these sources by far the most valuable was 
Skinner's periodical, begun in Baltimore in 1839. Novice as he was at 
tlie time, Edgar's work was regarded with more than suspicion by Mr. 
Wallace, and, as a matter of caution as well as of honesty, whenever he 
borrowed pedigrees from Edgar they were so credited. 

Modern methods of investigating pedigrees were not dreamed of by our 
compiler then. His principal aim seems to liave been to get as large a 
<;ollection as possible, and whatever was found in print, whether news- 
paper, book, or hand-bill, was taken for granted; and pedigrees gathered 
from private sources were, like the others, submitted to little scrutiny. 
Neither men's motives nor their knowledge of what they represented to 
know were questioned, and in this way, after years of labor, a great mass 
of pedigrees was gathered, written in new form and order, and the thor- 
oughbred stallions numbered — which was the first instance of numbering 
horses in registration. While compiling the thoroughbred pedigrees, Mr. 
Wallace also incidentally seized upon such information as he found about 
trotting pedigrees and records, and these he arranged as an appendix 
to his work. Finally, in 1867, "Wallace's American Stud Book," a 
great, handsome volume of 1,017 pages, bound pretentiously in green and 
gold, was published in New York. 

The trotting supplement embraced about 100 pages, and that the editor 
was pretty well satisfied with it is shown by a sentence in the preface: 
*'It is believed that this compilation of trotting horses, embracing over 
700 animals, is very nearly perfect, but it is not claimed to be entirely so." 
Of coui'se, from the method of its compilation it was decidedly imper- 
fect, but it was the best and only compilation of trotting pedigrees up to 
that time. 

Meanwhile Mr. Wallace was pushing forward the compilation of the sec- 
ond volume of the "Stud Book," and in this traveled much, making per- 
sonal investigations. In 1870 this was completed, all the ground up to 
that year having been gone over, but in tlie course of the work " a great 
light"' began to dawn upon the compiler. He found that he had been 
proceeding on a wrong plan entirely. Experience in compiling and inves- 
tigating taught him that a pedigree may be printed in a newspaper, or 
even in a book, and still not be true. He discovered that the sources from 
wliich he had drawn were largely unreliable, that hundreds of pedigrees, 
through ignorance or dishonesty, or both, were fabrications and frauds, 
especially in their extensions in the maternal lines, and with the realiza- 
tion in full force of this knowledge came the determination, even though 
the last page of the manuscript for the second volume of the "Stud 
Book" was complete, that it should never see the light. 

At the same time Mr. Wallace had discovered that the trotting sup- 



550 THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 

plement was the part of his "Stud Book" most used and appreciated. 
He saw that the trotter was coming to be the horse of the American 
people, and that there was a great and new field opening in wfiich a lit- 
erature had yet to be formed. His experience with the " Stud Book " gave 
him the training necessary for the work before him, and thus equipped, 
with little capital outside of his newly acquired knowledge, and marvel- 
ous natural industry and perseverance, with an unusual capacity for 
hard work, he turned in 1870 to the work before him— the literature of the 
trotter. 

" Wallace's American Trotting Register." 

He had as a nucleus the supplement to Volume I. of the " Stud Book," 
added to which was the work done and knowledge gained in compiling 
the second volume, together with an increasing library and written data. 
Thus in incidentally adding a few pages of trotting pedigrees to his " Stud 
Book," Mr. Wallace had builded better than he knew, but he even now 
had little conception of the extent and richness of his new field of explora- 
tion. He traveled all over the country, levying upon every source of in- 
formation for his "Trotting Register;" but, taught in the dear school of 
experience, depended chiefly upon personal investigation, taking monthly 
and yearly less and less for granted. He gradually became more trained 
in meeting the natural human fondness for embellishing, extending and 
completing pedigrees without reference to fact or evidence, and the 
equally common predilection for stating as known facts those thing.s con- 
cerning pedigrees that were only of common report. This work was 
excellent training for the more extended duties of the future, and it gave 
Mr. Wallace an insight into methods of the olden time, and a knowledge 
of men and horses that later made him, backed by uncompromising 
honesty, absolute fearlessness, and a quite unusual disregard for " policy," 
a "terror to evil-doers" in the realm of manufacturing in whole or in 
part fraudulent pedigrees. 

Still the knowledge, the caution, the system that made it almost im- 
possible in the last years of Mr. Wallace's administration to impose a fraud 
upon the "Register" were of slow, gradual, but constant growth. The work 
improved with every volume, with every year of experience, and the evi- 
dence that would be accepted in the compilation of the early volumes 
would not suffice later. Mr. Wallace had also the quality of just as re- 
morselessly overthrowing his own errors as those of others, and thus a 
system of correction was continually going along, in which work Wallace^s 
Monthly, founded in 1875, was a particularly efifective agency. 

The first volume of the "Trotting Register" was published in 1871, and 
was a neat book of 504 pages. It contained, besides the pedigrees gathered, 
tables of all trotting and pacing performances up to the close of 1870, and 
this was the first time in which the records of the trotting turf were 



APPENDIX. 551 

collected and published. This part of the work entailed a vast amount of 
research, including a thorough review of all sporting papers, annuals and 
other sources where contemporaneous record of racing would be liable to 
be made, but it was a very valuable feature; and, besides serving as a 
basis for Mr. Wallace's future compilations, was unscrupulously seized upon 
by imitators who, from time to time, sought to publish '-record books." 

There was also an introduction to the volume entitled, "An Essay on 
the True Origin of the American Trotter," which showed a glimmering of 
understanding of the truths of history and of breeding as now understood 
by students well grounded in the subject. In the second volume, how- 
ever, was an essay that marks an epoch in the literature of breeding. 
Written less than three years after the introduction to Volume I. , it be- 
trays the fact that in the intervening years the author had risen suddenly 
and broadened infinitely in his study of the science of breeding, and his 
understanding of the application thereto of the facts of trotting history. 
It advanced then entirely new views, and it was the first article published, 
as far as the writer is aware, that rose to an appreciation of the supremacy 
of biological laws in horse breeding, and suggested such a thing as 
psychical heredity in the transmission of habits of action. It originated 
the term " trotting instinct," so generally used thereafter, began the dis- 
cussion of the problem of the increasing number of fast trotters from 
pacing ancestors, and wound up with ten sound propositions or conclusions 
based throughout on the law that like begets like. It opened up new and 
endless lines of investigation and thought, and at once elevated the dis- 
cussion t) a scientific plane. This article, written by Mr. Wallace origi- 
nally for the Spirit of the Times, marked the advent of the school of 
thought on breeding now almost universal. 

The second volume of the "Register" was published in 1874, and the third 
in 1879. The first three volumes of the "Register" contained about 10,000 
pedigrees, and the statistical tables in the second and third volumes were 
greatly improved and amplified over those in the first. Volume II. gave 
a table of sires of 3:30 horses, with the number to the credit of each sire, 
and the number of heats to the credit of each performer — a sort of vague 
foreshadowing of the famous " Great Table of Trotters under their Sires," 
later to be conceived and developed by Mr. Wallace, and destined to be- 
come the most valuable single trotting compilation yet designed, and the 
one now universally used, adopted and imitated. This volume also gave 
a table of 3:35 trotters to the close of 1873, arranged in the order of their 
speed. The first table of trotters under their sires was published in 
Wallace''s Monthly, covering the statistics to the end of 1877. 

The third volume was much larger than its predecessors. The industry 
of breeding trotting and pacing horses was, under the stimulus of the 
" Register " and Wallace^ s Mbnthli/, and other agencies with which Mr. 
Wallace was identified, and of a general era of prosperity then dawning, 
advancing and extending now at rapid strides, and about this time certain 



552 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 

events of almost inestimable influence on the future of the business 
transpired. 

In the autumn of 1876 there -was formed at New York the National 
Association of Trotting Horse Breeders, an organization in which Mr. 
Wallace's influence predominated from its inception until a short time 
before its dissolution, for lack of an excuse for existence. This organiza- 
tion was broadly representative of the best elements in the breeding busi- 
ness in its virile and useful days, and accepted a sort of advisory and 
supervisory control over the "Trotting Register;" and Volume III. and sub- 
sequent volumes were compiled under its authority. Questions of dis- 
puted pedigrees and other such issues affecting breeding and the record 
of pedigrees were decided by a Board of Censors appointed by this associa- 
tion; and, aside from its usefulness in connection with the " Trotting 
Register," it contributed largely to the advancement and encouragement of 
breeding by inaugurating colt stakes, and other stakes designed more 
especially to attract the breeder than the professional campaigner. 

Before the third volume was through the press the need of some meas- 
ure for restricting registration became apparent to Mr. Wallace. The eco- 
nomics of the "Register" demanded it, but beyond tliis the need of system- 
atizing and establishing a specific breed called for some definition as to 
what rightfully belonged to that breed. Up to this time the only rule was 
the indefinite provision that ' ' anything well related to trotting blood " 
might be acceptable as eligible by the compiler of the "Register." The 
problem that confronted those who took a broad and comprehensive view 
was to educate public opinion up to that point where the possibility of 
establishing a breed of trotters would be appreciated. As early as April, 
1878, Wallace's Monthhj strongly urged the necessity of a standard, and 
this was the first suggestion of one that had been made. At the Novem- 
ber meeting of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders that 
year the Board of Censors in their report presented a letter from Mr. 
Wallace advising the adoption of a standard, a recommendation which the 
Board indorsed. Meanwhile the matter was being agitated and discussed 
in Wallace's Monthly, and affairs were gradually shaping for action. In 
the March, 1879, number of the Monthly a standard formulated by certain 
Kentucky breeders and forwarded by Major H. C. McDowell was printed 
and commented upon. It was fair on its face, but under discussion its 
weak points were made clear. For instance, its fourth rule made stand- 
ard "Any mare the dam of any mare or stallion that has produced or 
sired a horse, mare, or gelding with a record of 2:30." It was pointed 
out that under this rule the celebrated English thoroughbred mare 
Queen Mary would become a standard trotter, for her son, the race horse 
Bonnie Scotland, had sired the trotter Scotland. As other provisions 
made the sisters and brothers of standard animals standard, the defects of 
the Kentucky standard were made patent, and the Breeders' Association 
failed to approve it. Instead, at a meeting at the Everett House, New 



APPENDIX. 553 

York, November 19, 1879, the standard as printed on pages 519-20, in the 
framing of which Mr. Wallace and General B. F. Tracy did the active 
work, was unanimously adopted. 

Under this standard the work of compiling Volume IV. , which involved 
bringing forward animals registere i in preceding volumes, that met its 
requirements, and numbering stallions, was carried on. 

Meanwhile, some Kentucky gentlemen failed to acquiesce in the stand- 
ard decision, and had, or believed they had, other grievances against the 
compiler of the "Register." They proceeded to plan to control the "Regis- 
ter," but as in the last chapter of this work Mr. Wallace gives full details 
of this and subsequent battles for the control of registration, this history 
need not be here repeated. 

In the meantime the breeding interest was enjoying remarkable pros- 
perity, and this was reflected upon and through the "Trotting Register" 
and Wallace's Monthly. In 1882 Volume IV. was published, Volume V. 
in 1886, and Volume VI. in 1887, these containing about 6,000 pedigrees 
each. Volume VII. appeared in 1888, Volume VIII. in 1890, and 
Volume IX., the last published by Mr. Wallace, appeared in 1891. 

While an adequate discussion of the standard is neither necessary or 
possible in this article, it was so obviously part and parcel of the "Trot- 
ting Register" that its history must be briefly outlined. The standard 
formulated in 1879 served its purpose well, but it was but an initial step, 
and it was fully recognized by Mr. Wallace at the time that it would have 
to be revised and strengthened from tim^ to time so as to keep pace with 
the progress of the breeders. If the standard to-day is held in slight 
esteem, or even in contempt, it is clearly because it has been allowed to 
lag far behind the progress of the breed. 

Evils grew out of the standard, even in its early years, simply through a 
quite general misunderstanding of its purposes and its full meaning. Stand- 
ard rank became instantly so popular and so sought after that thousands of 
breeders aimed solely to breed into the standard, without much regard for 
other necessary qualifications. They seemed to forget that it was merely a 
definition of the blood that was eligible to the "Register," and not, 
nor ever intended, to be taken as a general measuring stick of value. Soon 
after its adoption an era of great prosperity came in trotting affairs, with 
recklessly high prices for standard animals. With an apparently insatiable 
market there came an abnormal expansion of the industry. Thousands" of 
men began breeding without knowing anything, either practically or 
theoretically, about the industry, except how to get into the standard. 
Hence the overproduction of not only standard trotting horses, but all 
kinds of trotting horses of inferior breeding and little excellence, and the 
subsequent break in prices, for all of which the standard has been by 
inconsiderate persons blamed. 

Not long after its adoption Mr. Wallace saw these dangerous tendencies, 
and in the Monthly warned the breeders against them, and early began 



554 > THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

agitating for a revision of the rules. But nothing could stem that rising 
tide, and at first the opposition to any change in the rules was vehement 
and general. The obviously easy gateway into the standard was through 
rule seven, and this became the storm center of the discussion. Mr. Wal- 
lace led in the call for the abolition of . his rule, and did it so persistently 
and well that gradually the leading breeders and thinkers were won over, 
but the outci'y against a change was so earnest and so general among the 
smaller breeders that the National Association hesitated long. Though a 
Committee on Revision was appointed as early as December, 1885, it was 
not until December 14, 1887, that a revision was finally effected, the 
standard being then adopted as printed on pages 530-21. 

Every reader can observe, by comparison with the previous standard, 
that there was a wise and conservative strengthening of the rules all along 
the line. The next step contemplated by Mr. Wallace was not only a further 
restricting revision on blood lines, but also an increase in the speed rate 
required, an advance from 2:30 to 2:25, then ultimately to 2:20, his pur- 
pose being that the standard should keep pace with the progress of the 
breed. But before any of these steps were made the "Register" pa.ssed 
into other hands — and other theories and practices have prevailed, with 
the result that the standard is to-day held in derision and the value of the 
"Register" has sunk to the vanishing point. But before reaching this 
phase of our history some account of Mr. Wallace's other publications is in 
order. 

"Wallace's Monthly." 

At a very early period in the history of the " Trotting Register" Mr. 
Wallace perceived the necessity of there being some medium of communi- 
cation with the breeders which he could control. This was one of several 
reasons, which need not here be detailed, the outcome of which was the 
establishment of the publication which has played a greater part than any 
other in developing tie trotting literature of to-day, and in leading Amer- 
ican thought on the science of hveeding— Wallace's MontJily. The first 
number came out in October, 1875, with Benjamin Singerly, publishei', 
and John H. Wallace, editor. Mr. Singerly was an uncle of Hon. William 
M. Singerly, of the Philadelphia. i2eeo/-d, and had large printing establish- 
ments in Harrisburg and Pittsburg, Pa. The first twelve numbers of 
Wallace's Monthly were printed in Harrisburg, though published from the 
outset from New York. Benjamin Singerly died in August, 1876, from 
which time Mr. Wallace carried on the publication himself, from the little 
office at 170 Fulton Street, overlooking St. Paul's churchyard. 

In accordance with the time-honored custom in Journalism, the first 
number of Wallace\s Monthly contained a salutatory outlining its purposes 
and its policy, and in almost every detail that policy was honestly lived up 
to while Mr. Wallace controlled the magazine. The horse was to be made the 
leading, but not the exclusive feature; full trotting and running summaries 



APPENDIX. 555 

with indexes were to be published; correspondence was invited; and, as a 
cardinal principle of poli -y, gambling in any and all forms was to be un- 
compromisingly fought against. This last detail of policy Mr. Wallace 
rigidly adhered to always. He opposed public betting in any fo.rm and 
under any pretense, and believed, and acted up to the belief, that if racing 
could not be maintained without betting it were better that grass should 
grow on the tracks. The first number of the Monthly contained a 
descriptive article by " Hark Oomstock," and some selected matter, but 
was chiefly the editor's work — mostly concise historical matter, dealing 
with the early progenitors of the trotting breed. 

With each number the MontJily strengthened, until soon it had gath- 
ered around it the brightest writers in the country. Notwithstanding this, 
however, the editorial department was always its strongest feature, and it 
rapidly became a power in the Ian I . Among the earliest contributors were 
" Hark Comstoek" (Peter C. Kellogg), always a fluent writer, and one of 
the most versatile special pleaders on horse topics known to the turf press; 
Charles J. Foster, the gifted "Privateer," whose work, from a literary 
standpoint, was of te:i times a model of finish; " Yah Amerikanski" (Spen- 
cer Borden), and " S. T. H." (S. T. Harris), both brilliant, especially in 
controversy; H. T. Helm, Levi S. Gould, and many others prominently 
known in turf literature a quaiter of a century ago. 

Spirited controversy early became a feature of the Monthly, and in these 
passages-at-arms the editor was generally found taking a leading hand. 
As a writer Mr. Wallace was always above all things forceful. He fortified 
himself in theory and fact amply, and his style was so direct, yet compre- 
hensive, that every shot told, and even those who disagreed with him were 
forced to read and admire these spirited discussions. Mr. Wallace more- 
over early impressed the public with his uncompromising honesty, and 
with the fact that, above all things, he had the courage of his convictions. 
There was no dodging issues, no dallying or compromising with humbug 
of any sort; a spade was called a spade, and no consideration of " policy" 
brought a note of indirection into the Monthly's editorial pages. The 
personality of the editor was ineffaceably stamped on his magazine, and 
its influence became potent for good far beyond the limitations of mere 
circulation. 

The magazine became quickly the leader in thought on breeding sub- 
jects, and hardly an advanced idea that to-day prevails in this field of 
literature but can be found first suggested in the Monthly. The first 
taole of trotters under their sires was published in Wallace's Monthly for 
1877; the standard was first suggested in its pages; the pacer as an origin 
of trotting speed was first advanced in February and March, 1883; it was 
the flist to formulate and advocate and put to the test a scale of points for 
judging horses; and above all it was the power that educated breeders to 
an understanding of breeding on truly scientific principles, and brought 
about an acceptance and appreciation of the laws of heredity as applied to 



556 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

breeding the trotter. And, interspersed with this continual seeking for 
the light and the right, there was an amount of historical matLer pub- 
lished that would make the compilation of a valuable book on the Ameri- 
can trotter possible from the Monthly alone. It was, moreover, continu- 
ally exposing frauds of history and of pedigrees, and was as potent in 
guarding as it was in discovering the truth. It was the recognized enemy 
of fraud, of humbug, of false pretense everywhere, and attacked them iu 
high places as well as low, and that its editor incurred the enmity of many 
whose designs attracted the Monthly''s searchlight, and were thwarted 
by it, is a fact known of all men. 

This, in brief, was the character of the Monthly from its foundation, 
until it passed out of Mr. Wallace's hands. To follow its detailed history 
through the nearly sixteen years of Mr. Wallace's editorship is not the 
purpose of this article, but the rather to group the salient factors that 
made it what it was, and that have secured for it an enduring place in 
trotting history. 

The Monthly was from the first illustrated, and the progress in horse 
art is well demonstrated by tracing through its pages. Its first drawings 
were made by James C. Beard, who came of a race of artists, but whose 
attempts at horse portraits were wretched caricatures, one and all. Still, 
they seemed to be the best, or rather the least bad, then- obtainable. Mr. 
Wallace, however, was painfully cognizant of the lack of truthful por- 
traits of horses, and was not less delighted than surprised when, one Sep- 
tember day in 1878, a young man came into his office, and exhibited 
drawings that were so obviously truthful portraitures that they were a 
revelation in horse art. A rapid questioning as to whether he had drawn 
them, and where he had hidden his light so long, developed that the young 
genius was Herbert S. Kittredge, of Pennsylvania. He was immediately 
engaged, and his work in the Monthly was the first reputable horse por- 
traiture in American literature. This gifted, self-educated genius died in 
May, 1881, long before his prime, and when his powers were daily develop- 
ing. He was the forerunner of Whitney, Dickey, Morris, and others 
whose ability to faithfully portray horses is acknowledged to-day. He 
had not the mechanical aids — notably the camera — or processes which 
they so freely call into play, but in true artistic ability to draw faithfully, 
it is doubtful whether this undeveloped master was the inferior of any 
artist who has yet made horse portraiture a specialty in any country. 

From year to year the contributory staff of Wallace's Monthly increased, 
and always had in its membership a number of the leading breeders and 
students. For many years Mr. Wallace did practically all the editorial 
work himself, as in fact he did the registration work. But this gradually 
outgrew him, and soon his office staff began to increase. First he removed 
the office to 212 Broadway, not far from its first location. Then in May, 
1887, the final move was made to commodious offices in the Stewart Build- 
ing, at Broadway and Chambers Street, when the office staff had grown 



APPENDIX. 557 

until more than a dozen assistants were employed on all the publi- 
cations. 

Among the earliest editorial assistants on the Monthly was C. T. Harris, 
later trotting editor of the Spirit of the Times, and still more recently of 
The Horse Revieiv, a faithful and conscientious worker. Later Gurney C. 
Gue, a clever writer, and exceptionally well grounded in facts of pedigree 
and record, occupied a desk with the Monthly, and is now one of Mr. 
Dana's " bright young men " on the Sun. In 1886 Leslie E. Macleod be- 
came associate editor, and continued in that capacity until 1890. He 
subsequently became managing editor of The Horseman, and later edito- 
rial writer of The Horse Review. 

Of contributors, among the best known may be named, in addition to 
those enumerated as identified with the Monthly at tlie start, General B. 
F. Tracy, Allen W. Thompson, Samuel Hough Terry, "Mark Field" (Jas. 
M. Hiatt), "O. W. C." (0. W. Cook), Thos. B. Armitage, "Mambrino" 
(H. D. McKinney), Otto Holstein, -'Bill Arp," " Aurelius" (Rev. T. A. 
Hendrick), A. B. Allen, "Fidelis," Harvey W. Peek, Benjamin W. Hunt, 
"Roland" (Leslie E. Macleod), Major Campbell Brown, F. G.Smith, 
Judge M. W. Oliver, Prof. Chas. T. Luthy, Colonel F. G. Buford, John 
P. Ray, "Vision" (W. H. Marrett), H. C. Goodspeed, and others. 

The last number of Wallace''s Monthly issued under Mr. Wallace's 

editorship was published in July, 1891. It then passed to the American 

Trotting Register Company, at Chicago, and its degeneration was rapid, 

and in a few months it died for lack of brains. Robbed of its virility and 

of its purpose, without editorial direction, and aiming only to lead a 

harmless existence, and to say or do nothing to offend any one of a score 

of directors and hundreds of stockholders, it soon began to lead a useless 

existence, and dropped out of the notice of thinking men. It became the 

antithesis of all that it had been, and its end was a pitiable one for a 

publication with a history of sixteen years of fearless, honest, able 

direction. 

" Wallace's Year Book." 

Early in the history of the Monthly Mr. Wallace decided to drop run- 
ning summaries, and give exclusive attention to trotting and pacing 
statistics. These grew so rapidly that they soon became burdensome, and 
an outlet became inevitable. Furthermore the adoption of the standard, 
depending as it did on records of performances, necessitated for its appli- 
cation a bureau of statistics, and these considerations and others — not the 
least of which was the recognition of "a long-felt want "—prompted Mr. 
Wallace to start "Wallace's Year Book." The first volume of this valu- 
able annual was published in May, 1886, covering the performances for 
1885. and contained, besides summaries of all races in which a heat was 
trotted in 2:50 or less, a 2:30 list for the year, and the Great Table of 
Trotters under their sires. The book contained 273 pages, was bound in 
flexible cloth, and sold at $1. 



558 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 

An improvement of the greatest value and importance was made in the- 
Great Table in the first volume of the "Year Book." This'was the addi- 
tion after the list of performers under each sire of the names of 'his sons 
that had sired performers, with the number to the ci*edit of each, and of 
the performers out of his daughters. It furnished at a glance what a. 
horse had done, not only of himself, but through his sons and daughters, 
and the Great Table thus improved became at once the gauge of trotting 
blood by which breeders everywhere estimated the comparative values of 
the different families and different sires. It was the most clear, con- 
densed, yet comprehensive and perfect summing up of all the facts and 
experiences of trotting history imaginable, and so apparent is this fact 
that nothing original has ever been attempted to replace it, while all com- 
pilers, without exception, imitate it. The Great Table of itself would 
have carried any book to success. 

The second volume of the " Year Book,'' 330 pages, contained in addi- 
tion to the same class of matter as its predecessor, tables of sires and 
dams, great brood mares, and fastest records. Still further improvements 
were made in every year. Volume VI., published for 1890, was a hand- 
somely bound book of 642 pages, with summaries of all races in which, 
heats were trotted or paced in 2:40 or better, list of best records slower 
than 2:40, complete 2:30 lists with extended pedi.;rees, the Great Table 
with the pedigrees of the sires extended, list of 2:20 trotters according to 
records, list of 2:20 trotters under their sires, list of great brood mares,, 
sires of dams, mares the dams of producing sons or daughters, tables of 
fastest records, champion trotters from 1845 to 1890, champions at all 
ages from yearlings to five-year-olds, champion stallions, table of 2:20* 
pacers, and of 2:30 pacers under sires. No such comprehensive and 
valuable mass of statistics was ever arranged, and this volume was in. 
itself a perfect encyclopedia of trotting literature. 

No eulogy of the "Year Book" is necessai'y, for every farmer's boy 
knew before it was three years old that it was indispensable to all horse- 
men. It instantly bounded into a place of authority, and to thousands 
who felt the "Register" out of reach it was at once "Stud Book" and 
"Racing Calendar," and none of Mr, Wallace's creations performed a. 
wider public service, or attained a popularity so broadcast and sudden. 
The new work was peculiarly fortunate in having back of it the authority 
of the "Register," and the prestige of a name that had already become 
world-wide as rendering everything it bore authoritative — but even allow- 
ing for these advantages the quick popular indorsement of the "Year 
Book " was an eloquent testimony to the wisdom of its plan. 

Conclusion. 

The "Wallace Trotting Register Company, with a capital of $100,000, was 
organized in 1889, and October 1, of that year, all the publications be- 



APPENDIX. 559 

came the property of this company. The last chapter of this book details 
the final transfer to the American Trotting Register Association in 1891. 

With the fortunes of the Wallace publications since that transfer it may 
be, perhaps, questioned whether this sketch has anything to do, and yet 
it would seem incomplete without the sequel. As already stated, Wallace^s 
Jfow^/iZ^/ degenerated to nothing and died. The "Year Book " has been 
emasculated until it is but a shadow, incomplete and unsatisfactory, of 
what it was, and is notoriously published at a loss. Its once great tables 
are cut from their compl 'te state to be merely the tables of a single year, 
and where one complete "Year Book "was in the Wallace regime the 
only hand-book necessary, now the student must rummage through half 
a dozen, more or less, to ascertain the simplest series of facts. The 
standard has been mismanaged, revisions have been made and rescinded, 
and no advance has been made in the speed qualifications, though 3:20 
trotters are as common to-day as 2:80 trotters were in 1891. In con- 
sequence, registration has fallen away, and from being a good purchase 
at 1130,000 in 1891, the "Register" properties to-day are rated so 
dubiously far below par as to make the expression of their value 
in figures hardly possible. That a period of " hard times" came shortly 
after the purchase of the "Register" is true — but the practical wrecking 
of the Wallace publications cannot be accounted for solely on the theory 
of business depression . 

Such in brief outline has been the story of the founding of these works, 
which in their own upbuilding helped incalculably to upbuild one of the 
nation's great industries. The present works may be destroyed or pass 
away, but the true Wallace works cannot. Mr. Wallace's works have a 
place in horse history, secure, unique, alone. Created, we might say from 
nothing, they each and all grew and prospered in his care and guidance, 
and became powers for good and auxiliaries of industry. If he is a bene- 
factor who causes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before, how 
much the riiore is he whose labor and genius have enriched ten thousand 
farms, and been the most potent single influence in developing a produc- 
tive industry the extent of which can only be estimated in millions. Mr. 
Wallace's works will live after him. In speaking once on the transient 
nature of fame, a distinguished lawyer, a man of national reputation, said: 
"After I am gone I will be remembered as a successful lawyer among 
many other successful lawyers, but Mr. Wallace's name will live as long as 
a horse exists on the earth." We rarely judge contemporaries justly. It 
needs the softening perspective of time in which to lose the dimming prej- 
udices of the present; and however much these works may be appreciated 
to-day, their true worth, what they accomplished, and the productive 
genius, purposeful industry, and plain, consistent honesty from which they 
were evolved will only be clearly seen and fully conceded by the historian 
of the future. 



INDEX. 



Aaron Pennington, 451, 452. 

Abdallah, 20, 237, 261, 267, 275, 311, 316, 832,336, 
389, 414. 

Abdallah (Alexa'^der'sl, History of, 272, 294, 
296, 297, 298, 299. 

Abdallah Chief (Roe's), 311. 

Abdallah, History of, 255, 261. 

Abdallah Mambrino, 299. 

Abdallah Pilot, 297. 

Aberdeen, 275. 311, 414. 

Abiri (stront; horses), 39. 

Abraham in Egypt, 36. 

Acquired Characters and Instincts, 471. 

Acrelius, Rev. I., Colonial Writer, 137, 179. 

Ada C, 443. 

Adams, L. B., 266. 

Adams, R. M., 382, .383. 

Adams' Stump, 359. 

Adams, Zach., 849. 

Administrator, 275. 

Adrian Wilkes, 288 

Adval, Johannes. 28 

Advance of Standard, 523, 524. 

Advertiser, 493. 

Aguilillas, 472. 

Albert W., 293. 

Albion, 295, 451. 

Alcantara. 288. 

Alcyone, 288. 

Alderman. 450. 

Aleppo, 59, 410. 

Alexander, A. J., 526, 530, ,532. 

Alexander, R. A., 295, 296, 343, 350, 415, 416, 417, 
420, 421, 422, 458, 506, 516. 

Alexander. J. J., 432, 434, 436. 

Alexander's Abdallah. (See Abdallah, Alex- 
ander's.) 

Alexander's Edwin Forrest. (See Edwin For- 
rest.) 

Alexander's Norman. (See Norman.) 

Alexander's Pilot Jr. (See Pilot Jr.) 

Alfred (Imported), 343, 417. 

Algeria. 44. 

Alix, 306, 477. 

Allen, A. B., 557. 

Allen, A. B. & L. B., 399. 

Allen, Philip, 349. 

Allen, William Russell, 538. 

Allerton, 288. 

AUerton. Isaac. 110, 121. 

Allie Gaines. 299. 

Allie West, 299. 

Allev, 302. 

Almack, 20, 237. 259, 344. 

Almonarch, 299. 

Alinont, 304, 463. 

Almont, History of. 297. 

Almont Jr. (1764), 299. 

Almont Jr. (1829). 299, 407. 

Almont's Leading Sons, 299. 

Altamont, 299. 

Ambassador, 288. 

Amble, The, 157. 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 192, 

Ambling Horses, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163. 
192. 



Ambulatura, The. 157. 

"America Dissected." Extract from, 176. 

American Commander, 243. 

American Eclipse, 318, .3.34, 363, 432, 446, 447,448. 

449, 450. 4S8. ' ' 

American Eclipse. Pedigree of, 446-450 
American Girl, 286. 
American Hiatoga, 365. 
American Native Race Horses, 96, 105. 
American Pacer and Relation to American 

Trotter, 172-189. 
American Race Horse, Origin of, 92, 96-105, 

106. 
American Race Horse, The, 8, 42, 90-107 
American Saddle Horse, 190-195 
American Star (Seely's), 303, 3()8, 311, 312. 338. 

339, 340. 341, 503. ' 

American Star (Conklin's), .341. 
American Star Family, 338-341. 
American Star (Seely's), History of, 338-341 
American Star's Services, 340. 
American Stud Book (Bruce's), 104. 
American Stud Book. (See also Wallace's 

American Stud Book.) 
American Stud Book (Wallace's), 101-104, 459 
American Trotting Register, 390, 412, 459, 460 
American Trotting Register Association, 536- 

545, 557-559. 
American Turf Register, 97. 
American Wild Horses, 196-204 
Amy. 313. 

Ancestors of Messenger, 205-221 
Anderson, John, 438, 439, 443. 
Andrew Jackson, 327, 329, 336, 498. 
Andrew Jackson, History of, 323-325. 
Andrew Jackson, Jr., 327. 
Andrus Horse, 265. 
Andrus, Mr., 265. 
Andy Johnson, 329. 
Angelica Mare, 413. 
AngUii, Timothy, 501, 505. 
Anteeo, ~93. 
Anteros, 293. 
Antevolo, 293. 

Antiquity of American Racing, 90. 
Antiquity of Narragansett Pacers, 180. 
Antiquity of the Pacing Horse, 16, 154-171, 180, 

Antiquity of Trotters and Pacers, 461 

Arab Barb, 93. 

Arabia (see also Arabia Felix, Arabia Deserta 

and Yemen), 2, 5, 39. 40. 41, 42. 43. 44-95 ' 
Arabia (no horses at Christian era), 27-42 
Arabia Deserta (see also Arabia). 4, 40 55 
Arabia Felix (see also Arabia. Arabia Deserta. 

and Yemen), 2, 4, 42, 43, 55. 
Arabia, First Horses in, 28. 
Arabian Blood (see also Arabia, etc.), 167 168 
Arabian Horse, The, 51-66. 
"Arabians." so-called (imported), 93, 94, 95 
Arabian Horse. (See Arabia, Arabia Deserta. 

Yemen, Arabs, etc.) 
Arabian (Lindsay's). (See Lindsay's Arabian.) 
Arab Horses, A. Keene Richards', 64, 65, 66 
Arabian Traditions, 5, 455. 



563 



INDEX. 



Arab Horses. President Grant's, 64. 

Arab Horses in America, 64, 65, 66. 

Arabs (English Foundation Stock), 68-72. 

Arabia. Wild Horses of, 5J6. 

Ararat, Mt., 88, 32. 

Aratus (by Director), 357. 

Aratus (Phare's), 357. 

Aratus (Push's), 356. 

Archer, 402. 

Argyll, Captain, Raids Port Royal, 142. 

Arion, 292, 294, 477, 493. 

Armenia, 2, 3, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 39. 

Armenian Kings. 29. 

Armitage, Thomas B., 557. 

Arnold, .\zariah, 236, 260. 

Art in Portraying Horses, 556. 

Amazonia, 20, 257, 259. 

Appendix: History of the Wallace Publica- 

cations, 547-559. 
Ashford, W. H., 151. 
Asia Minor, Eastern, 30. 
Asia, Western, 32. 
Assyria, 39. 
Astor, Henry, 229. 
Arhamo, 294. 
Atkinson, William, 248. 
Atlantic. 299. 
Auburn Horse, 346. 
" Aurelius," 557. 
Australian (Imported), 420. 
Austin, G. A., 265. 
Ayers, E. W., 501. 
Ay res, F. J., 350. 
Axtell. 288. 
Azote, 294. 



Babcock, Mr., 313. 

Backus, Scobey & Burlew, 345. 

Backman, Charles, 283, 289, 290, 291, 413, 414, 

415, .501. 503, 
Badger (Imported), 95. 
Bad Qualities, Heredity of, 478. 
Bagg & Goodrich, 360. 

Bailey Brothers' English Racing Register, 83. 
Baker, I. V., Jr., 382. 
Balch, Wesley P., 357. 
Bald Chief. C^ee Bay Cheif) 
Bald Galloway, 84, 85, 163, 213, 410. 
Bald Stockings (Tom Hal), 358, 359. 
Baldwin, B. H.. 382. 

Bancrofr, Historian, on Wild Horse, 801. 
Barbs (English Foundation Stock), 68, 72, 80. 
Barbs, 81, 82, 85. 
Bai-ker, Henry L., 350, 362. 
Baronet (Imported), 334, 447. 
Baronet, 259. 
Baron Wilkes, 288. 
Barnes. Mr., 1.50. 
Barss, 392, .395, 396. 
Bartlett's Turk, 346. 
Bashaws, 21. 
Bashaw (Imported), 92. 
Bashaw (Green's), 282, 283, 327, 469, 
Bashaw Jr., 308. 
Bashaws and Clays, 321-337. 
Bassinger, 432. 436. 
Bathgate, A., 151. 
Bay Chief, 295. 
Bay Chief, Pedigree of, 418. 
Bay Kentucky Hunter, 362. 
Bay Messenger (Downing's), 316. 
Bay Morgan, 364. 
Beard, James C, Artist, 556. 
Bear Grass, 342. , , „»- 

Beautiful Bay (True Briton or Traveler), 367- 

763. 
Beautiful Bells, 297, 332. 
Beck, 348. 
Beckwith, Mr., 282. 



Belgrade Turk, 69. 

Bell Bord, 292. 

Bell Boy, 293. 

Belle (dam of Green's Bashaw), 876, 283. 

Belle (dam of Belmont). 299. 

Belle (by Top Bellfounder), 335. 

Belle Brandon, 313, 314. 

Belle F., 311. 

Belle Loup, 299. 

Belle Rice, 313. 

Belle Strickland. 502. 

Belle of Wabash, 432, 434, 435, 436, 437. 

Bellflower, 294. 

Bellfounder (Imported), 282, 335. 

Bellfounder Family, 396, 397, 400, 401. 

Bellfounder (Brown's), 299, 399. 

Bellfounder (Kissam's), 399. 

Bellfounder (La Tourett's), 400. 

Bellows, John, 377, 380. 

Belmont, 297, 298, 299. 

Belmont's Leading Sons, 300. 

Benedict, James W., 294. 

Benger, Thomas, 224, 225. 

Ben Higdon, 3,55. 

Ben Hur, Famous Pen Picture from, 66. 

Bennett & .lones, 437. 

Bertrand, 437. 

Bet, 353. 

Bett, 346. 

Betty Bloss, 402. 

Betsy Baker, 237. 

Betsy Ransom. 334. 

Beuzetta. 28S, 305. 

Beverley's History of Virginia, 111. 

Bidwell, George, 433. 

Big Mary, 502. 

Big Shakespeare (Probasco's), 355. 

'• Bill Arp." 557. 

Billingtou, Mr., 150. 

Billy Duroc, 345. 

Bird, .345. 

Bishop, Isaac, 234. 

Bishop's Hambletonlan. (See Hambletonian.) 

Bitugue Hoi-ses (Russian), 393, 394. 

Black and All Black, 261. 

Black Arab Barb, 93. 

Black Bashaw, 322. 

Black Hawk. 349, 376, 377, 381, 433, 498. 

Black Hawk Family, 366, 389. 

Black Hawk (Vernol's), 282, 327. 

Black Hawk (Seely's), 283. 

Black Hawk Prophet, 265. 

Blackie, 360. 

Black Jin, 279, 280. 

Black Messenger, 249. 

Black River Messenger, 361, 362. 

Black Prince (Scobey's), 346. 

Black Rose, Pedigree of, 419, 

Black Warrior (Warrior), 149, 150. 

Blackwood, 350. 

Blanco, 357. 358. 

Blandine, 350. 

Blank, 70, 402. 

Blauvelt. John G., 250, 339. 

Blaze, 208, 209, 211, 402. 

Blessing, The, Voyage of, 109. 

Blind Tuckahoe, 365. 

Bloody Buttocks, 70. 

Blue Bull (Wilson's), 352, 353, 354. 

Blue Bull, 274. 

Blue Bull Family, .352. 354. 

Blundeville, Thomas, Early English Writer, 
159, 160, 161, 170, 175. 

Blunt, Wilfred S., Experiences of, with Ara- 
bian Horses, 5, 6, 7, 61, 62, 63. 

Board of Censors, 518, 552. 

Bob Johnson, 439, 443. 

Bodine, 302. 

Bogus, 361. 

Bogus Hunter, 361. 



INDEX. 



563. 



Bolingbroke, Lord, 216. 

Bolivar (Pintler's), 415. 

Bonesetter, 359. 

Bone Swinger, 361. 

Bonita, 293. 

Bonner, A. A., .304. 

Bonner, David, 304. 

Bonnie Scotland, 482, 514, 525, 527, 553. 

Boott, James, 397. 

Borden, Spencer, 156, 555. 

Boston, 420, 422, 424, 450, 451, 487, 488. 

Boston Girl, 325. 363. 

Bos well. Dr., 358. 

Bourbon Wilkes, 288. 

Bradhurst, Samuel, 333. 

Bradley, W. J., 343. 

Bi'asfield, George, 304. 

Brawner's Eclipse, 439, 443. 

Breckenridge, William L., 358. 

Breeders" .\ssociation. National. (See National 

A. T. H. B.) 
Breeding the Trotter a New Industry, 508. 
Breeding the Trotting Horse, 456. 
Breeding from Developed Parents, 499, 507. 
Breeders of 2:15 Trotters, 501. 
Breeders' Trotting Stud Book, 528, 533. 
Brewster, Dr., 363. 
Brickmaker (Andrew Jackson), 325. 
Bright John, 365. 
Bright Phoebus, 233, 252. 
Bristol Horse, 1.50. 
Bristol Grey, 261. 
Britain, Early Horses, 48, 49. 
Britain, First Horses of, 157-171. 
Britain, Time of Julius Caesar, 157. 
British Horses, Early, 164, 165, 166. 
Bro.lhead. Lucas. 419, 420, 422, 427, 428, 429, 431, 

441, 444, 526, et seq. 
Brokenlegged Hunter, 362. 
Brown, Mr., 399. 
Brown, David W., 365. 
Brown, Henry C, 435, 436. 
Brown, Major Campbell, 3.59. 557. 
Brown's Bellfounder. (See Bellfounder.) 
Brown George, 385. 
Brown Hal, :159. 

Brown Highlander (Imported), 861. 
Brown Pilot. 350. 
Brown Wilkes, 288. 
Bruce (traveler), 31. 
Bruce, O. Benjamin, 305, 450, 458. 
Brace's Stud Book, 104. 
Bmce, Sanders D.. 100, 104, 420, 423, 441. 
Buckley, John, 334. 
Buff on, 26. 

Buford, Col. F. G., 557. 
Bull Calf, 243. 
Bullock, Mr., 216, 222, 223. 
Bunbury, Sir Charles, 76. 
Burch Mare, 350. 

Burckhardt (traveler in Arabia), 54. 
Burdach, 469. 
Burlaw, Charles, 346. 
Burlew, Scobey & Backus, 345. 
Burton, Abram, 261. 
Burton Horse, 261. 
Burtsell, Dr. Alex., 59. 
Bush, Charles, 247. 
Bush, Philo C. 244. 245. 
Bush Messenger, 20. 

Bush Messenger. (See Ogden Messenger.) 
Bush Messenger. (See Messenger, Bush's.) 
Byerly Turk, 68. 



Cade. 70, 84. 163, 213. 

Cadet, 407. 

Cadiz (Gades), 44. 

Cadmus (by American Eclipse), 354. 

Cadmus (Iron's). .354, 3,58, 414. 



California Patchen. (See George M. Patchen 

Jr.) 
Camel ("the ship of the desert"), 52. 
Camilla, 246. 
Campbell, M. C, 360. 
Campdown,310. 
Canada, 13, 1.5, 16. 

Canada, Early Horse History, 142, 143. 
Canadian Maritime Provinces, 152. 
Canadian Pacer, Origin of the, 142, 143, 151, 

152, 153. 
Canavan, George, 3.34. 
Cannon's Whip, 419. 

Cappadocia. (See Cappadocian Horses.') 
Cappadocian Horses, 2, 28, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 

34. 42. 
Captain Beard, 439. 
Captain Lyons, 312. 
Captain Magowan,4.32, 433, 483. 
Carlisle Gelding, 410. 
Carman, Charles. 330. 
Carman Mare, 3:«-336. 
Carman, R. F., 333, 334. 
Carpenter, Lieutenant, 369, 375, 376. 
Carpenter, Powell, .323. 
Carthage, Horses of, 44, 45, 48. 
Case, Jerome 1., 314. 
Case, John, 349. 
Cassius M. Clay, 327. 
Cassius M. Clay, History of, 330-333. 
Cassius M. Clay, 329, 333. / 
Cassius M. Clay Jr. (Nea%'e's), 332. 
Cassius M. Clay Jr. (Strader's), 332, 383, 336. 
Cedar Park ( Estate i, 74. 
Celtag and Iberi (Spanish tribes), 46. 
Centaur, False Pedigree Given, 10C», 101. 
Central Truth in Breeding, 512. 
Chamich, Rev. M., 28. 
Champion (Grinnell's), 259, 344, 347. 
Champion (807), 274. 
Champion Family, 344-.348. 
Champion (Gooding's), 346, 347, 348. 
Champion (Nighthawk), 347. 
Champion (Scobey's or King's), 345. 
Charcoal Sal. 334, 336. 
Charles Hadley Mare, 332. 
Charles Kent Mare. (See Kent Mare.) 
Charles II., King, 7, 14, 57, 58, 68, 135, 163, 168. 
Charley B., 346. 
Charlotte Gray, 350. 
Charlotte Temple, 322. 
Chenery. W. W., 452. 

Chenery's Grey Eagle. (See Grey Eagle.) 
Chestnut Arabians, 70. 
Chestnut Hill, 310. 
Chestnut Hill Farm, 309. 
Childers (Imported), 95. 
Childers. (See Flying Childers.) 
Chimes, 293. 

Chincoteague Ponies, The, 111. 
Chincoteague Wild Horses, 10, 11. 
Chinn, Higgius. 3.58. 
Cholmondeley,|Marquis of, 76. 
Cilicia, 30, 410. 
Clara (Crazy Jane), 149. 
Clara (Dexter's dam), 303. 
ClarkChief, 318, 320. 
Clays and Bashaws, 21, 321-337. 
Clay, James B., 315. 
Clay Pilot, 297, 332. 
Cliff Dwellers, 199. 
Clockfast, 4,50. 
Cobs, 398, 400. 
Cobwebs, 294. 

Cock, Daniel T., 234, 24], 251. 
Cock, Townsend. 234, 236. 
Cock of the Rock, 338. 
Cockroft, James M., 315. 
Coffein, Goldsmith, 354, 356, 414. 
Coke, Mr.. 70-73. 



564 



INDEX. 



Golden, Cadwallader R., 98, 233, 234, 244, 247. 

Colden's Magazine, 98. 

Coles, Gen. Nathaniel, 232, 233, 251, 253. 

Collateral and Indirect Heredity, 464. 

Colonial Horses, 9, 11, 108-141. 

Colonial Horse History, 108-141. 

Colonial Running-Stock, 96. 

Columbus (Old), 151. 

Commander, 243. 

Commissioner of Agriculture, 404, 405. 

" Committee on Rules," The Kentucky, 526, 

527, 528, 529. 
Commodore, 316. 
Compton Barb, 70. 
Conductor, 294. 
Conestoga Horses, 136. 
Conklin, E. K.,;M1. 
Conley, John W., 304. 351. 
Connecticut, Colonial Horse History, 131-133. 
Conqueror, 899. 
Constable, Mr., 447, 448. 
Constantius, Emperor, Sends Horses to Arabia, 

2, 28, 31, 42, 43, 55. 
Consul, 365. 
Contemporaries (Runningbred) of Messenger, 

220. 
Controller, 482. 
Copperbottom, 195. 
Copperbottom (Chinn's), 358. 
Copperbottoms, 433. 
Copeland, 294. 
Cook, O.W., 1:12,375, 557. 
Coomb Arabian, 70. 
Cooper, Amos, 253. 
Cooper, Benjamin B., 229. 
Cooper, J. F., Describes Narragansett Pacers, 

181. 
Cooper, Richard Isaac, 248. 
Cooper's Gray, 353. 
Corbitt, William, 501, 505. 
Cossack Horses, 393. 
Cortez E.xpedition and Horses, 18, 202. 
Coriander, 251. 
Count By ram, 69. 
Count Thoulouse, 69. 
Crabstick, 278, 279. 
Crabtree Bellfouuder, 332. 
Crane, Mrs., 301. 
Crazy Jane (Clara), 149. 
Croft's Bay Barb, 69. 
Cropped Fagdovvn, 2.52. 
Cross Heredity, 464. 
Cruger, H. N., 247. 
Cuba, Pacers Exported to, 173, 182. 
CuUeH Arabian, 70. 
Cumberland, Duke of, 77, 166. 
Cumming's Whip, 359. 
Cummins, Col. F. M., 282. 
Curwen's Bay Barb, 69, 84. 
Cuyler, 275. 
Cynthia, 346. 

D 

Dabster (Imported), 95. 

Daisy Burns, 502. 

Dame Winnie, 491, 492. 

Dam of Ethan Allen, 384. 

Dam of Jay Gould, 503. 

Dam of Messenger. (See Messenger.) 

Daniel Lamliert, History of, 389. 

Daniel D. Tompkins, 241,325. 

Dan els. P. F., 248. 

Danish Horses, 165, 391. 

D'Arcy White Turk, 68. 

D'Arcy Yellow Turk, 69. 

Darius, the Mede, 30, 50. 

Darley, Mr., 58, 59, 69. 

Darley Arabian, 58, 59, 69, 72, 106, 208, 410. 

Darwin, Charles, 468, 471, 503. 

Dauntless, 275. 



Davis, Jesse M., 345. 

Davis, Barnes, 362. 

Dean, Silas, on American Saddle-Horse, 190. 

Dearing, Jas., 243. 

DeLancey, Mr., Early Turfman, 125, 126. 

DeLancey, James-. 368, 369, 370. 371, 375, .376. 

Delevan, W. A., 453. 

Delight, 350 

Denmark (Gaines'), 194, 195, 318. 

Descendants of Messenger, 255. 

Description of Electioneer, 290. 

Description of George Wilkes, 285. 

Description of Hambletonian (10), 268-270. 

Description of Messenger, 236-228. 

De Soto, Ferdinand, 18. 

De Soto, Expedition and Horses, 202. 

Developed Speed, Breeding from, 499-507. 

Development, Value of, 499-507. 

Dewey, Henry. 362. 

Dexter, 303. 317, 482. 

Dexter's Race with Ethan Allen 385-389. 

Dey, Mr., 437. 

Deyr, Syrian Horse Market, 5, 62, 63. 

Dickey, Robert L., Artist, 5.56. 

Dictator, 27.5, 311. 

Dictator. History of, 303, 304. 

Dillon, Jesse, 423, 423. 

Dine, John C, 355. 

Diomed (imported), 417, 447. 

Direct Heredity, 4C4. 

Direct, 305. 

Directum, 305. 

Dirigo, 363. 

Disputed Pedigrees, Investigation of, 409^55. 

Distribution of Horses, Early, 36-50. 

Distribution of Trotters in United States, 515. 

Doble, Budd, 386. 

Dodsworth, 68. 

Doherty, Mr. (see Royal George), 150. 

Dole, Charles S., 305. 

Doll, .361. 

Dolly, 304. 

Dolly Spanker, 284, 285. 

Don Horses, 393. 

Dorrel. Daniel, 352. 

Dover Messenger, 251. 

Downing, Marcus, 316, 362. 

Draco, 286, 357. 

Draft Horses of Pennsylvania, 136. 

Drennon (Brinker's), 195. 

Drew Horse, 363, 363, 364. 

Drift, 308 

Driver, 303. 

Driver (Reed's), 403. 

Dubois, Cyrus, 339. 

Dubois, James, 250. 

Dubois, Major, 342. 

Duke of Cumberland, 77. 

Duke of Leeds, 76. 

Duke of Newcastle, 57, 58, 70, 80, 81, 87. 162, 167, 

170. 
Duke of Newcastle. (See Newcastle). 
Durgau, Dr., 454. 
Durkee, Harrison, 304, «51 . 
Duroc, .338, 3G3, 417, 447. 
Duryea, Garrett, 415. 
Dusenbury, Theodore, 340. 
Dutch Horses, 11, 12, 129, 172, 374, 375, 391, 393, 

396. 
Dutch Horses in America, 91, 120, 121, 123. 
Dutch Horses in New England, 128, 129. 
Duvall, William, 425, 426. 



Eagle (Hunt's), 326. 

Earl of Cumberland, 166. 

Early Bird. 305. 

Early Distribution of Horses, 36, 50. 

Early English Racing, 83. 

Early British Horses, 79, 157, 171, 164, 165, 166. 



IKDEX. 



5G5 



Early English Pacers, 158-171 . 

Early Exportations of Pacers, 173, 182. 

Early Colonal Pacing Races, 177, 178. 

Early Pacing, Philadelphia, 179. 

Early Thoroughbi-ed Importations, 230. 

Early American Trotters. 456, 457, 515. 

Early Horse History, Canada, 142, 153. 

Eastern Asia JMinor, 30. 

Echo, 275. 

Eclipse (Lawrence's) 338. 

Eclipse (Brawner's), 439. 

Edgar's Stud Book, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 447, 

448, 51(), 548, 549. 
Edsall, Major, 295. 
Edsall's Hambletonian, 295. 
Edward Everett, 275. 
Edwin Forrest, 325, 361, 362, 417, 457. 
Egbert, 275, 310. 
Egmont, 300. 
Egotist, 293. 

Egypt, First Horses of, 2, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43. 
Eldridge, Richard, 315. 
Electioneer, History of, 289-294. 
Electioneer, 275, 356, 413, 438, 403, 464, 503, 504. 
Electioneer's Leading Sons, 293. 
Elector, 293. 
Elgin Marbles, 156. 
Elliot, Colonel. 451 . 
Ellzey, Prof. M. C, 74. 
Elphinstone, Admiral, 391 
Ely, George H., 501. 
Emerson, Mr., 349. 
Emma Mills, 312. 
Emperor Constantius, 79, 95. 
Enchantress, 305. 
Enemies Made by Honest Methods, 511, 512, 

534, 535. 
Engineer (English), 212. 
Engineer, History of, 241-243. 
Engineer II., 251, 259, 344. 
Engineer (Burdick's), 243, 266, 306. 
England, First Horses of, 157-171. 
English Foundation Stock, 8, 68-72-106. 
English Race Horse, The, 67-89. 
English Race Horses, Native, 82, 86-92, 105, 106. 
English Stud Book, 83, 84, 87, 88, 106, 207, 216, 

217, 218, 548. 
English Pacers, 84, 85, 86, 192, 193, 473. 
English Race Horses, First Importation of, 

95. 
English Trotters. 89. 
English Hackney, The, 400, 408. 
Eoff, James L., 306, 349, 443. 
Ericsson, 318. 
Eros, 293. 
Escape, 146. 
"Esopus Horses," 122. 
Ethan Allen, History of, .381-389. 
Ethan Allen, 20, 274, 286, 3:J4, 489. 
Ethan Allen's Race with Dexter, 385-389. 
Ethan Allen (Drury's), 265. 
Eton Horse, 304. 

Euren, Henry F., 169, 209, 402, 404, 405. 
European, 348. 

Exportations of Pacers, Early, 173, 182. 
Extreme Speed, Breeders of, 501. 
Eyclesheimer, J. L. B., 349. 
Ezekiel, Prophet, 4, 32. 



Fagdown, 852. 

Fairlawn Farm, 300, 501. 

Fall is, 293. 

Family of Mambrino Chief, 315-320. 

Fancy (by Messenger), 322. 

Fanny, 346. 

Fanny Cook, 389. 

Fanny Kemble, 326. 

Fanny Pullen, 241,481. 

Fanny Ransom, 334. 



Fantasy, 294. 

Fashion Stud Farm, 308, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505. 

Favorite Wilkes, 288. 

Feagles, David R., 271. 

Felter, Col. Harry, 284, 453. 

Ferguson, George W., 362. 

Ferguson, William, 360. 

Fictions in Early Pedigrees, 104, 105. 

Fictitious Pedigrees, 511, 512, 534, 535. 

" Fidelis," 557. 

Finnegan. P. A., 335. 

Firetail, 365. 

First Horses in Arabia, 28-31. 

First Horses Brought to America, 142. 

First Importations in New York, 120, 121, 128» 

123 
First Horses in New England, 128, 129, 130. 
First American Racing, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126. 

134. 
First American Race Course, 90. 
First Racing in Virginia, lO'J, 110, 113. 
First American Horse Advertisement, 130. 
First Race-Horses in South Carolina. 140. 
First Trotting Races, 456, 4.57. 
First Importations of Thoroughbreds, 95, 96. 
First Impregnations, Influence of, 465. 
First Consul (Bond's), 233, 322. 
Fisk, A. C, 311. 
Fitz, Stephen, Early English Writer, 158, 159, 

170. 
Flanders Horses, 81. 
Flanders Mares, 160. 
Flora, 306. 

Flora Temple, 235-306, 335, 361, 477, 498. 
Florizel, 450. 
Flying Childers, 59, 208. 
Flying Morgan, 382, 383. 
Forbes, J. Malcolm, 538. 
Forshee Horse, 150. 
Foster, Charles J., 99, 218, 219, 221, 285,286,487, 

51 1 555 
Foundation Stock of England, 68-72, 106. 
Foundation Saddle Stock, 194, 195. 
Founders of Trotting Families, 274. 
France, Early Horses of, 143. 
France, William C, 501, .505. 
Frank, 442. 

Franklin. Benjamin, 136. 
Frauds in Early Pedigrees, 96-97, 100, 101. 
Fred Crocker, 292, 293. 
Frolic, *34. 



Gades (Cadiz), 44. 

Gage, D. M., 306. 

Gaits of Saddle Horses, 192. 193, 194. 

Gaits, Mechanism of, 154-156, 184, 185-186. 

Gait, The Ambling, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 

163, 192. 
Gaits of Colonial Horses, 116, 131. 
Gait, The Pacing, 157-163. 
Granatin, 451. 
Galloway, Samuel, 74. 
Galloway, K. F., 307. 
"Galloways" in Virginia, 113. 
Galloway Breed, 84, 85. 91, 163, 164, 176. 
Gambetta Wilkes, 288. 

Gameness, Trotter and Runner, 482, 489, 491. 
Gano, 318. 
Gavin, Joseph, 414. 
General Benton, 438. 
General Butler, 286. 
General Knox, 265, 309, 502. 
General McClellan. 303. 
General Taylor, 349. 
Gentry, John R., 17. 
George B. McClellan, 363. 
George M. Patchen, 274, 329, 331, 3.39. 
Geoi ge M. Patchen, History of, 333-436. 
George M. Patchen, Jr., 302. &io-XHi. 



566 



INDEX. 



George Wilkes, 275, 308. 

George Wilkes, History of, 284-289. 

George Wilkes, Pedigree of, 453. 

George Wilkes' Sons. Table of, 288. 

Gibson's Tom Hal, 359, 360. 

Gideon, 357. 

Gilbert, James, 453. 

Gilmore, David W.. 338. 

Gilmore, Frank, 328. 

Gimcrack, 447. 

Gipsey Queen, 432, 433. 434. 

Glasgow and Heinsohu, 342. 

CUencoe (imported), 432. 

Gleucoe Chief, 306. 

Glen view Farm, 501, 505. 

(jloster, 302. 

(Godfrey Patchen, 330. 

Godwin, Joseph H., 332, 333. 

Godolphin Arabian, 8, 58, 59, 60, 70, 71, 73-78, 84, 
106, 3.53, 402, 411, 412. 

Godolphin Arabian, H'story of, 72-78. 

Godolphin Arabian, Pictures of, 73-78. 

Godolphin, Lord, 70, 73, 74, 77, 78. 

Gog Magog (Estate), 70, 73, 76, 77. 

Golden Farmer, 402. 

Goldsmith, Alden, 286, 301, 302, 303, 304. 

Goldsmith Maid, 308, 358, 477. 502. 

Gomer, 28, 29, 32. 

Gooding's Champion. (See Champion.) 

Gooding, T. W. & W., 346. 

Goodspeed, H. C, 5.57. 

Goodwin Watson (Strathmore), 309. 

Gordon, Gen. John G., 475. 

Gould, Ebenezer, 236. 

Gould, Jay, 308. 

Gould, Levi S., 440, 442, 444, 555. 

Governor NieoUs Establishes Racing, 90. 

Governor Sprague, History of, 312-314. 

Grace Darling, 363. 

Grand Bashaw, 321. 

Orandsons of Hambletonian, 284-314. 

Grand Sultan, 321. 

Grant's (General) Arabs, 64. 

Grant, Mr., 349. 

Gray, Angereau. 416. 

Gray, William, 3.59. 

Gray's Tom Hal, 359. 

Great Table of Trotters, 542, 551, 558, 559. 

Great Table of Trotting Families, 274. 

Green, A. C, 308. 

Greene, E. J., 364. 

Green, Joscpli A., 282, 28.3. 

Greene, Judge W. E., 364. 

Gi-een, Roger, Pioneer of North Carolina, 139. 

Green's Bashaw. (See Bashaw.) 

Green Mountain Maid (by Harris' Hamble- 
tonian), 264. 325. 

Green Mountain Maid, 289, 290, 3.55, 413. 

Gretchen (l)y (iideon), 3.57. 

Grey Eagle (Cheuery's). 452. 

Grey Eagle Mare, 439, 440, 441, 442, 444. 

(jrey Figure, 253. 

Grey Harry, 237. 

Greyhound, 68. 

Grey Mambi'ino, 248. 

(irinnell, William R., 259, 345. 

Grinnell's Chaiiipioti. (See Champion.) 

Griswold, Judge, 368. 

Griswold, Munley, 4:^7. 

(Jrosvenor, Lord, 2 •7, 214, 215, 216. 

Growth of 2:30 List, 477. 

Gae, Gurney C, 557. 

Gunn, General, 246. 

Guy MiUer, 285, 888, 307. 

M 

Hackney, The English, 398, 400-408. 
Hackney Stud-Book, 169, 209, 402, 404. 
Haggin, J. B., 335. 
JHaic (Haicus), 3, 29, 32. 



Haight, Daniel B., 2.50, 260. 

Haight, Nelson, 260. 

Halcorn (Peters'), 195. 

Hall, George C. 308. 

Hall, Joseph, 3:M. 

Halstead, Messrs., 335. 

Hambletonian (Bishop's), 20, 21, 232, 235, 251, 

262, 265, 267, .306, 487. 
Hambletonian (Bishop's) Stud Services, 234, 

235. 
Hambletonian (Harris'), 20, 150, 235, 261, 309, 

348, 437. 
Hambletonian (10), History of, 267-283. 
Hambletonian Speed and Training, 271, 272. 
Hambletonian (10), 20, 21, 2.58. 303, 309, 310, 311, 

312, 313, 314, 32:i-329, 398, 399, 453, 459. 
Hambletonian (Green's), 301 . 
Hambletonian Jr., 302. 
Hambletonian (Andrus'), 265, 306. 
Hambletonlan's Sons and Grandsons, 284-314. 
Hambletonian's Sons (table), 275. 
Hambletonian (Wood's), 297. 
Hambletonian (Judson's), 235, 265, 306. 
Hambletonian (Parris'), 265. 
Hambletonian (Sprague's), 313. 
Hamlin, C. J., 501. 
Hanchett Horse, 264. 
Hancock, Joseph, 322, 323. 
Han ley, Moses, 365. 
Hanley, Samuel, 365. 
Hanley's Hiatoga. (See Hiatoga.) 
Hannibal's Cavalry, 45, 47. 
Haphazard, 397. 

Happy aiedium, 243, 266, 275, 306. 
Harbinger, 299. 
Harding, General, 486. 

" Hark Comstock"' (Peter C. Kellogg), 267, 555. 
Harkness, James, 345. 
Harmor, Mr., Colonial Writer, 109. 
Harold, History of, 275, 305. 
Harris, Charles T., 557. 
Harris, S. T., 5.55. 

Harris' Hambletonian. (See Hambletonian.) 
Harris, Russell, 263. 
Harrison, Benjamin, 111. 
Harry Clay, 289, 332, 413. 
Harry Wilkes (Conn's), 313. 
Hartford, First Settlement, 13, 132. 
Harvey, Dr. Elwood, 111. 
Haselton, William, 249. 
Hattie Woodward, 312. 
Havoc, 343, 417. 
Hawkins, Jonathan, 303. 
Hayward, Alvan, 238, 239, 240. 
Hazard, I. T., 174, 175, 177, 178, 181. 
Hazard, Rr>bert, 174. 
Head'em, 334. 
Helena, 294. 
Helm, H. T., 302, 555. 
Helmsley Turk, 68. 

Hempstead Plains Race Course, 12, 90, 122, 
Hendrick, Rev. T. A., 557. 
Hendrickson, William, 335. 
Hendryx, H. J.. 310. 
Henry, .338, 449. 450. 
Henry Clay, 285, 336, 454, 455. 
Henry Cla'v. Hi.story of, 327-330. 
Henry Clay Ji-., 329. 
Henry Hal, 360. 
Henry, Mason, 319. 
Henry B. Patchen, 336. 
Henry VIII., Law of, 81. 
Heredity, 461. 
Heredity of Acquired Habits and Instincts, 

471. 
Heredity of Bad Qualities, 478. 
Heredity of Influence, 465. 
Herbert, Henry, 476. 
Hero, 235, 355, 437. 
Heroine, 301. 



INDEX. 



567 



Herr, Dr. Levi, 316, 318, 319, 333, 417. 

Herschell, 300. 

Hetzel, Joseph, 301. 

lliatoga (" Old Togue"), 365. 

Hiatoga (Rice's), 364. 

Hiatoga (Hanley's), 365. 

Hiatoga (Scott's), 365. 

Hiatt, James M., 557. 

Hibbard, D. B., 347. 

Higbee Brothei-s, 313. 

High Asia Not Original Habitat of Horse, 84. 

Highland Farm. 501. 

Highland Maid. 477-498. 

Highland Messenger (Wamock's), 362. 

Highlander (Watlcin's), 360, 361. 

Hill, David, 377, 382, ;383. 

Hills Black Hawk. (.See Black Hawk.) 

Hinda Rose. 292. 

" Hiram," 437. 

Hiram Drew, 364. 

Hiram, King of Tyre, 35, 41, 48. 

History, Colonial Horse, 108-141. 

History of Abdallah, 2.5.5-201. 

History of Alexander's Abdallah, 294. 

History of Almont, 297. 

History of Andrew Jackson, 323-325. 

History of Imported Bellfounder, 397-400, 

History of Belmont, 299. 

History of Black Hawk, 377-381. 

History of Cassius M. Clay, 330-333. 

History of Daniel Lambert, 389. 

History of Dictator, 303. 

History of Electioneer, 289-294. 

History of Ethan Allen, 381-389. 

Historv of George M. Patcheii, a33-3.35. 

Histoiy of George Wilkes, 281-289. 

History of Governor Sprague, 312-314. 

History of Hainbletonian (10), 267-283. 

History of Happy Medium, 3()6. 

History of Harold, 305. 

History of Henrv Clay. 327-330. 

History of Jay CJould, 307-309. 

History of Justin Jlorgan, 367-376. 

History of Kemble- Jackson, 325-327. 

History of Long Island Black Hawk, 337. 

History of Mambrino Chief, 315-317. 

History of Messenger, 222-231. 

History of the (3rloff Trotter, 390-397. 

History of the Pacing Horse, 154-171. 

History of Pilot Jr., 343, 344. 

History of the Standard, 518-524. 

History of Strathmore, 309. 

History of Tippo, 145-147. 

History of Volunteer, 301. 

History of Wallace's Monthly, 554-557. 

History of the Wallace Publications, 547-559. 

Hoagland, Sim D., 264. 

Hobtiie, The Irish, 80, 85, 113, 160, 161, 163. 

Hobgoblin, 70. 

Holbert Colt, 311. 

Holconib, Joel W., 382, 383. 

Holstein, Otto, 557. 

Holton, John A., 421-431. 

Holton, Llewellyn, 421. 423, 424, 426, 428, 429, 

430, 431. 
Honest Ance, 349. 
Honest John, 325. 
Honesty, 307. 
Honeywood Arabian, 69. 
Hook, Thomas. 319. 
Hooker, Rev. 7 homas, 131. 
Hoosier Tom, 359. 
Hoover, Jonas, 327. 
Hopkins, (Jeorge, 437. 
Hopples, 157, 473. 
Hopson, Seth P., 260. 

Horse Advertisement, First American, 130. 
Hoi-seman, The, 5.57. 

Horse Portraiture, Improvement in, .5.56. 
Horse Racing, First in Virginia, 109, 1 10, 113. 



" Horse Review, The," 414, 557. 
Hotspur, 253. 

Houghton Hall, Norfolk, Eiig., 76, 77. 
How the Trotting Horse is Bred, 450, 460. 
Howard, Rev. Erastus, 146, 148, 149. 
Howard, James, 94. 

Howard, Sanford, on Winthrop Messenger, 
238 239 <=* ' 

Hoyt, Hezekiah, 294, 295. 

Hoyt, James W., 414. 

Hudson, Henry, Explorer, 120. 

Huggins, Dr., 474. 

Hulda, 288. 

Hulse Mare, 301. 

Hunt, Benjamin W., 557. 

Hunt, John W., 258. 

Hunt's Eagle, 326. 

Hunter Mare, 357. 

Huntress, 302, 

Husted, Jacob, 251. 

Hutchinson, Blathias, 2.53. 

Huxley, Professor, on Primal Horse, 197. 

Hyksos. (See Shepherd Kings.) 



Iberi and Celtse (Spanish tribes), 46. 

Idol, 502. 

Importation of Messenger, 223. 

Importations, Early, 220. 

Importations, First, 8-16. 

Importations, First to Virginia, 109, 110, 116, 

Importations of Race Horses, 117, 118. 

Importations of Thoroughbreds, First, 95, 96. 

Impetuous, 306. 

Indeijendeut (Mott's), 312. 

Indiana Belle, 433. 

Indian Hill Farm, 319. 

Indirect and Collateral Heredity, 464. 

Infidel, English Trotter, 214. 

Influence of First Impregnations, 465. 

Inheritance, Laws of, 462, 463. 

Instincts and Characters, Acquired, 471. 

Investigating Pedigrees, 22. 

Investigation of Disputed Pedigrees, 409-455. 

lola, 261, ;J25. 

Irish Hobbies, 160, 161, 163, 164. 

Irons, John, 354. 

Irons' Cadmus. (See Cadmus.) 

Isaiah Wilcox Mare, 266. 

Itasca, 334. 



Jackson, Josiah, 278, 281 . 

Jackson, Tim T., 302, 330. 

Jackson, Thomas, 247. 

Jackson, Thomas, Jr., 241. 

James I. King, 7, 70, 163, 167. 

Janus (Imported), 95, 243. 

Japheth, 3. 

Jaques, Samuel, Jr., 397, 398. 

Jay Bird, 288. 

Jay Gould, History of, 275, 307-309. 

Jay Gould's dam, 503, 504. 

Jefferson, President, 64, 111. 

Jeffries, Daniel, 323, 324. 

Jenkinson, Thomas, 403. 

Jennet, The Spanish, 160, 161, 174, 175. 

.lenuy Duter, 253. 

Jenny Lind, 327. 

Jerome Edtly, 303. 

Jer.sey Fagdown, 252, 325. 

Jersey Highlander. 417. 

Jersey Kate, 330, 336. 

Jersey Wilkes, 288. 

Jewett, H. C, 501. 

Jigg, 211. 

Jim Munro, 297. 

"J. M.," 270. 

Job, the Patriarch, 39, 40. 



568 



INDEX. 



John Anderson, 330. 

John DUlard. 195. 

John Hal, 360. 

John Netherland, 360. 

John Stewart, 482. 

Johnson, Dick, 84. 418, 441. 

Johnston. Mr., 150. 

Jolly Roger (Imported), 96. 

Jones, Hugh, Colonial Writer, 112. 

Jones, Major William, 336, 246, 247, 256. 

Jones, David W., 226, 236, 237, 241, 247, 252, 256. 

Jones, Gilbert, 260. 

Jones, Peter W., 328. 

Jones, Richard B., 321. 

Joseph (Patriarch), 29, 36, 38, 41, 43. 

Joseph, John, 365. 

Joshua, 40. 

Judge Brigham (Jay Gould), 308. 

Judge FuUerton, 308. 

Judith, 357. 

Judson, Dr. Nathan, 265. 

Julia Johnson, 359. 

Juliet (by Pilot Jr.), 319. 

Julius Csesar's Invasion of Britain, 157. 

Justin Morgan, 367-376. 

K 

Kate (by Pilot Jr.), 297, 298. 

Katy Darling, 294, 295. 

Katty war Horses of India, 468. 

Kellogg, Peter C, 267, 269, 511, 555. 

Kellogg, Mr. (Battle Creek), 345. 

Kelly, Benjamin, 377-379. 

Kelly, John L., 379. 

Kemble Jackson, History of, 325-327, 331. 

Kemble Jackson Check, 326. 

Kennebec Messenger, 238. 

Kent, Charles, 281. 

Kent& Bailey, 455. 

Kent Mare, History of, 267, 276, 277, 399. 

Kentucky Hunter, 360, 361, 498. 

Kentucky Hunter. (See Shenandoah.) 

Kentucky Methods, Early, 511, 512, 534, 535. 

Kentucky Stud-Book. (See Breeders' Trotting 
Stud- Book.) 

Kentucky Standard, The, 524, 525, 526, 527, .528. 

Kentucky Trotting Pedigrees, Early, 516, 517. 

Kentucky Union, 312. 

Keokuk. 418. 

Kerner, Charles H., 308. 

King Almont, 299. 

King, David, 345. 

King James Arabian. (See Markham Ara- 
bian.) 

King Pharaoh, 341. 

King Rene, 300. 

Kings of Armenia, 29. 

King's Champion. (See Champion.) 

Kirk, Jacob, 253. 

Kissam, B. T., 2.56. 

Kissam, T. T., 256, 398, 399. 

Kittredge, Herbert S., Artist, 291, 894, 556. 

Kittrell, M. B., :i59. 

KittreU's Tom Hal, 359. 

Koontz, John A., on the Wild Horse, 300. 

Kosciusko, 319. 

Kremlin, 306. 



Lady 
Lady 
Lady 
Lady 
Lady 
Ladj- 
Lady 
Lady 
Lady 
Lady 
Lady 



Alport, 399. 
Balch, 357. 
Clinton, 339. 
Fulton, 482. 
Irwin, 311. 
Jane. 363. 
McClain, 400. 
Maud, 502. 
Moscow, 349. 
Moore, 261. 
Patriot, 301. 



Lady Sanford, 308. 

Lady Shannon, 264. 

Lady Suffolk, 243, 251, 344, 361, 377, 477. 

Lady Surrey, 327. 

Lady Thorn, 286, 308, 317, 318, 319, 399, 50a 

Lady Vernon, 325. 

Lady Waltermire, 309, 313. 

Ladv Warrenton, 325. 

Lady Webber, 400. 

Ladd, Mr., 312. 

Lakeland Abdallah, 305. 

Land of Uz, 40. 

Lander, Gen. F. W., 363. 

Lantern, 437. 

Lark. (See Charley B.) 

Last Pacers in Britain, 410. 

Lath, 70, 84, 163. 

Laurence's Eclipse, 332. 

Lawrence, John, 157, 159, 165, 170, 209, 211, 213, 

214, 401, 402. 
Laws of Breeding, 512-514. 
Laws that Govern, The, 460. 
Law of Heredity, 462. 

Leading Sons of Alexander's Abdallah, 297. 
Leading Sons of Almont, 299. 
Leading Sons of Belmont, 300. 
Leading Sons of Electioneer, 293. 
Leading Sons of George Wilkes, 288. 
Leavens, Louis T., 146, 147. 
Leedes' Hobby, 85. 
Leonard, John, 359. 
Leviathan, 451. 
Lewis, Enoch, 177, 178. 
Lewis, Joseph S., 453, 454. 
Lewis, Mr., 112. 
Lexington, 413, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 

446, 451, 479, 488. 
Like Begets Like, 512, 513, 514. 
Lilly Hitchcock, 443. 
Limber, 424, 426. 
Limber Jack, 3.59. 
Lincoln, President, 64. 
Lindsay's Arabian, 93, 94, 132. 
Lindsay, Captain, 94. 
Linsley, Mr., 368, 376. 
Little Albert, 294. 
Little Brown Jug, 360. 
Little Gipsey, 359. 
Lizzie (by John Netherland), 360. 
Lizzie M., 482. 
Loder, G. B., 352. 
Loder, Lewis, 352. 
Logan, Thomas, 322. 
Long Island Black Hawk, History of, 883, 327, 

331. 
Longstreet, Dr., 334. 
Looniis Brothers, 361. 
Lord Grosvenor, 448. 
Lord Nelson, 311. 

Lord Russell, Pedigree of, 420-431, 434, 
Lord Russell, 344, 429. 
Louis Napoleon, 303. 
Love, Joel F., 295. 
Lovejoy, Mr., 328. 
Lovelace, Governor, 122. 
Lucas, John, 358. 
Lucas, Le Grand, 529. 
Lucia, 309. 

Luckett, Benjamin, 420, 421, 422, 423. 
Lucy, 286, 308, 309, 335, 502. 
Lucy Fowler, 451, 452. 
Lula, 350. 493. 
Lula Wilkes, 493. 
Lumps, 288. 

Luthy, Prof. Charles T., 557. 
Lynne Belle, 294. 
Lyons, Captain, 369. 

IVI 

McDonald, William, 365. 



INDEX. 



569 



TIlcDowell, H. C, 304, 524, 526, 527, 528, 529, 531, 

533 552 
Mace, ban,' 286, 317, 386, 387. 
McFerran, J. C, 526, 527. 
McGrath, Price, 451. 
McKinney, H. D., 557. 
SIcKinney, Horace, 364. 
McKinstry Mare, 303. 
McLauglilin, Sam, 287. 
Macleod, LesUe E., 404, 557. 
McLoyd, Charles, on the Wild Horse, 200. 
McNitt, Mr., 348, 349. 

McSparran, Rev. Dr., 112, 134, 175, 176, 177, 178. 
Magog Hills (Estate), 73. 
Magnolia, 341. 
Magnum Bonum, 347, 350. 
Mag Taylor, 313. 
Maine Messengers, 515. 

Maine Messenger. (See Winthrop Messenger.) 
Major Edsall, 297. 
Mali, H. W. T., 538, .539. 542. 
Mambrino, 316, 344, 399, 400, 487, 557. 
Mambrino Chief, 20, 21, 261, 350, 418. 
Mambrino Chief and His Family, 315-320. 
Mambrino Chief Jr., 818. 
Mambrino (English), 19, 20, 213, 214, 215. 
Mambrino (Grey), 248. 
Mambrino, History of, 235-237. 
Mambrino Jr., 261. 
Mambrino Messenger, 261. 
Mambrino Patchen, 318, 319. 
IVIambrino Paymaster, 20, 237, 251, 259, 261, 315. 
Mambrino Pilot, 318, 319. 
Mambrino Russell, 344. 
M:imbritonian, .300. 
iMaiietho, Egyptian Historian, 37. 
Miinnol, 36. 
Manzanita, 292. 
Maria Russell, 420-431. 
Marion's Guerrillas. 295, 296. 
Maritime Provinces ((Canada), 152. 
"Mark Field," 557. 

Markham Arabian, 57-70, 80, 163, 167. 
Markham, John, .57; 70, 80. 
Markham, Gervaise, 80, 160, 161, 170, 175, 192. 
Marksman, .301. 
Slarquis of Cholmondeley, 76. 
Jlarrett, W. H., 5.57. 
Marsh's Primal Horse, 197. 
Marsh, Professor, of Yale, 197. 
Mai-sliall or Selaby Turk, 69. 
Marshall, Mr., Studmaster, etc., 69. 
Marshland Shales, 403. 
Marvin, Charles, 291, 292, 357. 
Mary Bell, 422. 
JMary Churchill, 422, 425. 
Mary Gray (Imported), 96. 
Mary Morris, 439. 
Maryland, 15. 

]Maryland, Colonial Horse History, 139. 
Maryland, Racing Prohibited, 15, 139. 
Mas(Mi, John T., 358. 
Maspero, Professor, 37, 39. 
Massachusetts, Colonial Horse History, 128- 

131. 
Masterlode, 275-311. 
Mathes, Albert, 377. 
M:>ttliews, W. A., 335. 
Matlock, T.. 179. 
Mattie Howard. 482. 
Maud S., 300, 305, 457, 458, 477, 487, 499. 
Maud S., Pedigree of, 420^31. 
May Day (by Miles Standish), 356. 
May Fly, 311. 
May Morning, 355. 
May Queen, 350, 356. 
Meander, 300. 
Mecklenburg Horses. 391. 
Media, 2, 30, 32. 
Median Horses, 29, 30, 33, 34. 



Medoc, 449. 

Merring. Mr., 352. 

Messenger (Imported), History of. 222-231. 

IMessenger and His Ancestoi-s, 205-221. 

Messenger's Descendants, 255. 

Messenger, Description of, 226, 227. 

Messenger as a Race-Horse. 222. 

Messenger's Stud Services, 229, 230, 

Messenger's Sons. 232-254. 

Messenger, (Imported), Reference to, 18, 19, 

316, ;i23, 327, 332, 338, 344, 348, 349, 357, 3S1, 

362, 399, 417, 457, 459. 
" Messenger," (the name abused), 254. 
Messenger (Austin's), 249. 
Messenger (Blauvelt's), 250. 
Messenger (Bush's), History of, 243-345. 
Jlessenger (Coffin's), 261. 
Messenger (Cooper's), 253. 
Jlessenger (Cousins'), 2,50. 
Messenger (Hutchinson's). 253. 
Messenger (Xesthall's), 146. 
Messenger (Ogden's), 361. 
Messenger (Pizzant's), 249. 
Messenger (Simpson's). 364. 
Messenger (Stone's). 364. 
Messenger's Runningbred Contemporaries, 28D 
Jlessenger Duroc. 275-289. 
Messenger Duroc (Packman's), 310, 311. 
Messenger Duroc (Durland's), 414. 
Messenger Duroc (Laurence's), 308. 
Messenger Duroc (Stevens'), 315. 
Middletown, 275. 
Miland. Colonel. 243. 
Miller, Guy. 270. 414. 
Miller. James, 295. 
Miller's Damsel, 233. 246, 248, 251. 
Millington, Dr., 244. 
Mills, James M., 311. 349. 
Mills, Joseph T., 348. 
Minchin. John, 308. 
Mingo. 339. 
Minor Families, 21. 
Miss Hervey, 397. 
Miss McLeod, .311. 
Jliss Russell. 299. 300, 344, 420, 431. ' 
Miss Shepherd, 423. 
Mittendorf. Prof. Von, 393. 
Modesty, 264. 
Mohammed, 4. 
Mohammed, Flight from Mecca, etc., 53, 54, 55, 

56, 57. 
Mohammed's Mares, 54. 
Mohammedanism in Northern Af ricay 47. 
Mohawk, 327. 
Monaco, 300. 
Monkey (Imported), 95. 
Monroe, "Jim," 295. 
Montaigne, 465. 
Moore, Hon. Ely. 326. 
Moore, R. H., 360. 
Moore. T. D., 359. 
Moors. 46. 

Morden, Isaac. 146. 147, 149. 
Morgan Family, 366-389. 
Morgan Horse. The, 482, 515. 
Morgan Tiger, 265. 
Morgan, Abner, 367. 
Morgan, John, 372. 
Morgan. John. Jr.. 367, 369. 
Morgan, Mr., 321. 
Morris. Lewis, 235. 236. 
Morris Family. Turfmen, 125. 
Morris. George F., Artist, 556. 
Morrissey, John, 286, 388. 
Morse. Calvin. 349. 
Morse Horse (Norman), 348, 350, 378. 
Morton, Earl of, 4(55. 466, 467, 468. 
Mound Builders. 199. 
Mount Ararat, 28, 32. 
Mount Holly, 250. 



570 



INDEX. 



Mozza, 348. 

Muley, Ishmael, King of Morocco, 69. 

Munger, Frank. (See Royal George.) 

Munger, William, 364. 

Munson, Isaac, 2(52, 263, 264. 

Munson Mare, 235. 

Muir, William, Historian, 53. 

Murray, Dr. J. H., 74. 

Murrier, D., English Artist, 77, 78. 

Musie's Dam, 502. 

Mustang, The, 204. 

N 

Nancy, 355. 

Nancy Dawson. 361. 

Nancy Hanks. 247, 307. 

Nancy Pope, 342, 343, 417. 

Nancy Taylor, 343. 343. 417. 

Narragansett Pacers, 12, 13, 14, 126, 127, 133, 
134, 173-182. 

National Association of Trotting Horse Breed- 
ers. 517, 518, 519, 520, 527, 552, 553, 554. 

National Horse Show, 406. 407, 408. 

National Trotting Association, 533, 534. 

Native British Horses, 164, 165, 166. 

Native English Race Horses, 82, 86, 96, 105, 106. 

" Natural History of Man," 472. 

Neapolitan Horses, 81-168. 

Nelson, 357. 

Nelson, C. H., 357. 

Nestor, 250. 

Nettie Burlew, .346. 

New Amsterdam (Nsw York), 122. 

New Brunswick. 1.53. 

Newcastle, Duke of, 57, 58, 70, 80, 81, 87, 92, 162, 
167, 170. 

New England, Colonial Horse History, 12, 128- 
134. 

New Jersey, Colonial Horse History, 138, 139. 

New Jersey, Racing Prohibited, 14, 15. 

Newmarket, The American, 90, 91, 122. 

New Netherlands. 11. 

New York, Colonial Horse History, 120-127. 

New York, First Horses of, 120, 121, 123. 

New York the Source of Supply of Trotting 
Blood, 515. 

NicoUs, Governor, Establishes Racing, 12, 122. 

Nichols, Mr., 474. 

Night Hawk, 347. 

Niles, Stephen, 148, 149. 

Nissaeum, Horses of, 30, 34, 50. 

Noble, Henry D., 262. 

Nonpareil. 327. 

Norfolk Trotters, 76, 169, 398, 400. 

Norlaine, 202. 

Norman (Alexander's), 3'')0, 417, 418. 

Norman Family, 348-351. 

Norman. (See Morse Horse.) 

Norseman, 79. 

North American, 309, 312, 313. 

North Carolina, Colonial Horse History, 139. 
140. 

Northern Africans, 46, 47. 

"Northern Kings," Horses of, 39. 30. 

Northern Syria, 38, 39. 

Norton, Selah, 369, 370, 371, 375. 

Norval, 293, 294. 

Nova Scotia, 153. 

Norwegian Horses, 165, 473. 

Nubian Horses, 31. 

Numidian Cavalry, Hannibal's, 45. 

Nutwood, 298, 300, 344, 493. 

Nutwood, Pedigree of, 420-431. 



O'Blennis, 325. 
Odom, Eli, 451, 452. 
Ogden, Judge David, 247, 248. 
Ogden Messenger, 247. 
Ohio Farmer, 3.52. 



Old Columbus, 151. 

Old Drew. (See Drew Horse.) 

" Old Duroc," 437. 

Old Jane, 346. » 

"Old Keokuk." (See Keokuk.) 

Old March, 360. 

"Old Narragansett," 498. 

Old Pilot. (See Pacing Pilot.) 

Old St. Lawrence, 151. 

Old Shales. (See Shales.) 

Old Sorrel. 308. 

" Old " Spirit of the Times, 99-101. 

Old Telegraph, 4.54, 4.55. 

Old Theories of Breeding, 510. 

Old Togue. (See Hiatoga.) 

"Old Turfman " (C. R. Colden), 98. 

Oliver, Joseph, :i30, 331. 

OUver, Judge M. W., 557. 

One Eye. 21, 235. 267, 277, 278, 281, 399. 

Oneida Chief, 361. 

Oneness of Trotting and Pacing Gaits, 498, 499, 

Oneness of Trot and Pace, 155, 156, 184, 185, 186. 

Onward, 288. 

Origin of American Race Horse, 92, 96, 105. 106. 

Originjof English Race Horse, 86-92, 105, 106. 

Origin and History of the Standard, 518-524. 

Original Habitat of the Horse, 2, 2i-35. 

Orloff, Count Alexis, 391, 395. 

OrlofE Trotter, The, 390-397. 

Orser, Sheriff. .328. 

Osborne. Lord Francis Godolphin, 76. 

Ott, Almeron, 346. 

"O. W. C," 557. 



Pace, The, 161-189. 

Pace and Trot, Varieties of One-Gait, 155, 156, 

184, 185, 186. 
Pacer of Canada, 142, 143, 151, 152, 153. 
Pacer, The, in Relation to Trotter, 172-189. 
Pacers in Colonial Period, 14, 116, 126, 118, 137. 
Pacers, E irly American, 112, 126, 137, 131, 133, 

133, 134, 138, 1.39, 141. 
Pacers, English, 84, 85, 86, 157-171. 
Pacers, Last in Britain, 410. 
Pacers of Rhode Island, 173-182. 
Pacers in Russia, 392, 393, 394. 
Pacing Ancestry of Saddle Horse, 191. 
Pacing Gaits, Mechanism of, 154-156, 184, 185, 

186. 
Pacing Horse, History and Antiquity of, 154- 

174. 
Pacing Pilot, 1.52, 19.5, 299, 316, :M3, 416, 417. 
Pacing Pilot. History of, 341-343. 
Pacing and Trotting, Oneness of, 17, 498, 499. 
Packer, L. D., 536, .539, .542. 
Paddy, 377. 

Palgrave, Historian. 52. 
Palo Alto Farm, 289, 291. 293, 294, 491, 492, 501, 

503, 504, 505. 
Parris Horse, 265. 

Parthenon at Athens, Frieze of, 16, 156. 
Pasacas, 299. 

Patchen, George M., 329, 331. 
Paul, 290. 
Paul Pry, 2.50, 251. 
Peabody, Warren, 295. 
Peacock, 348, 349. 
Pearce, Edmund, 342. 
Pearl, 323. 
Pease, Mark, 363. 
Peck. Harvey W., 557. 
Pedigree of American Eclipse, 446. 
Pedigree of Alexander's Norman, 417. 
Pedigree of Bay Chief, 418. 
Pedigree of Black Rose, 419. 
Pedigree of George Wilkes, 454. 
Pedigree of Hambletonian, 267. 
Pedigree of Lord Russell, 430-131. 
Pedigree of Maud S., 420-481. 



INDEX. 



571 



Pedigree of Messenger, 205-221. 

Pedigree of Miss Russell, 420-131. 

Pedigree of Nutwood, 420-431. 

Pedigree of Pilot Jr., 41li, 417. 

Pedigree of Sally Russell. 420-131. 

Pedigree of Sunol, 438-446. 

Pedigree of Tippoo, 145-147. 

Pedigree of Waxana, 438-446. 

Pedigrees, Early Fictions, 8. 

Pedigrees, Early Frauds in, 96, 97, 100, 101. 

Pedigrees, Investigation of, 22, 409-455. 

Pelhain. 498. 

Penn, William, Arrival of, 14, 135. 

Pennsylvania, Colonial Horse History, 135-138. 

Pepper, Col. R. P., 397, 421. 

Perkins, Mark D., 328. 

Perry, Alvah, 365. 

Persian Horses, 49, 50, 391, 468. 

Pet. 325. 

Peyton, Balie, 486. 

Pfifer, Dan, 335. 

Phallas, 305. 

Phallamont, 305. 

Pheasant, 232. 

Phidias, Greek Sculptor, 16, 156. 

Philadelphia, Early Pacing at, 179. 

Philips, Clark, 454, 455. 

Philips, E. v., 454. 

Philips, Josiah, 453. 

Philistorglus. 27. 39, 42, 95. 

Plueuicia. (See Phoenician Merchants.) 

Phoenician Merchants, 4, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40-48, 
;-9, 185. 

Photius. Early Writer, 27, 42. 

Pick's Turf Register, 83, 84, 214, 215, 216. 

Pictures of Horses, First Correct, 556. 

Piedmont, 299. 

Pierce, Abraham, .356. 

Pilot Family, 343, 344. 

Pilot Jr., 274, 309, 316, 416, 417, 458, 463. 

Pilot, Pacing, 195. 

"Pinafore Standard." (See Kentucky Stand- 
ard.) 

Pixley, 309. 

Place's White Turk. 68. 

Plato, 251. 

Plow Boy, 327. 

Plutarch, 465. 

Pocahontas, 355-358, 414. 

Pocahontas (Young), 355. 

Polk Brothers, 359. 

Polkan (Volcan), 392. 

Polonius, 311. 

Polybius, Historian, 45. 

Polydore Virgil, 165, 170. 

Pope Mare, 297. 

Porter Colt. (See Daniel Lambert.) 

Porter, .John, 389. 

Porter, Judge J., 245. 

Porter's Spirit of the Times, 99. 

Porter, William T., 98, 99, 2:J5, 259, 344, 437. 

Portia. 493. 

Port Royal, N. S., Raid on, 142. 

Portraits of Horses, First Correct, 556. 

PotSos, 447. 

Potomac (by Messenger), 245. 

Pray Colt, 279. 

Pray, Ebenezer, 278, 280. 

Pratt, John, 216, 222, 223. 

Primal Horse, The, 18, 195-197. 

Prince, 437. 

Prince Edward Island, 153. 

Prince of Wales' Arabian Horses, 60. 

Princeps, 319. 

Princess, 2:i5, 243, 266, 306, 307. 

Pritchard, Dr., 472. 

"Privateer," 555. 

l^ophet's Mares, The, 54, 55, 56. 

Pruden, James, 3.53. 

Purchas, Samuel, 166. 



Puett, Mr., 435. 

Purposes of Kentucky Standard, 524, 525, 526. 



Quaega Story, 465. 

Quaker Lass, 253. 

Quarter Racing, Colonial, 115. 

Queen Ann, 243. 

Queen Mary, 528, 552. 

Queen of Sheba, Visit to Solomon, 40, 48. 

(^ueen (dam of Blue Bull), 353. 

Quimby, David, 364. 



Race Horse, The American, 90-107. 

Race Horse, The English, 67-89. 

Race Horses, Native American, 96. 

Races. Early Colonial Pacing, 177, 178. 

Racing in America, Antiquity of, 90, 91. | 

Racing in England, Early, 83. 

Racing, First, in America, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 

134. 
Racing, First Established American, 12. 
Racing, First, in Virginia, 109. 110, 113. 
Racing Pi-ohibited in Maryland, 138. 139. 
Racing Pi-ohibited in New Jersey, 138. 
Racing Prohibited in Pennsylvania, 136. 
Racing Register, Bailey's English, 83. 
Rack, The, 192. 
Ralph Wilkes. 288. 
Randolph, John, 4.50. 
Ranger (Lindsay's Arabian), 94. 
Rattler, 157, 420, 422, 473. 
Raudenbush, Gleorge W.,310. 
Ray, John P., 454, 455, 557. 
Raynor Colt, 259, .344. 
Raynor, George, 259, 344. 
Red Bird, 345. 
Red Wilkes. 288. 
Reeder, Dr. George, 475. 
Regan, Joseph, 335. 
Registei- Association, The American Trotting, 

.5.36-.545. 
Regiilus, 70. 

Regidus Mare and Produce, 206. 
Relf, C. P., 319. 

Remington Horse, 2;«, 262, 264. 
Reynolds, Edward. 244. 
Reynolds, G. U., 320. 

Rhode Island. Colonial Horse History, 133, 134. 
Rhode Island Pacei-s. 173. 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 

179, 180, 181, 182, 286, 309. 313. 
Rhode Island and Virginia Pacing Races, 177» 

Ribot, Th., 466. 

Rice's Hiatoga. (See Hiatoga.) 

Rice, Edward. 364, 365. 

Richards, A. Keene, 6, 7, 64, 65. 66, 93. 

Richard, John, Publisher, 99. 

Richards, Richard, 3.50. 

Ridgeway, Benjamin C., 348. 

Rip Van Dam's Pacer, 127, 147, 174, 179. 

Rising Sun, 3.57. 

Rittenhouse, David, 365. 

Robert Fillingham (George Wilkes), 885. 

Robert J., 3(H5, 809. 

Robin Gray, 419. 

Robinson, Governor of Rhode Island, 174. 

Rockhill & Brother, 310. 

Rockingham (Imported), 322. 

Rockplanter, ;i46. 

Roderick, King of Visigoths, 46. 

Rodes, Levi T., 318. 

Roe, Seely C, 271, 383. 

Roebuck, 49.3. 

"Roland," 557. 

Romaine, Cyrus, 434, 435, 436. 

Romans in Britain, 79, 80. 

Rosalind, 502. 

Rosalind Wilkes, 313. 



:072 



INDEX. 



Roulin, Mods., 472, 473. 

Rous, Admiral, 4, 67, 71. 

Roxana, 70, 84, 168, 213. 

Royal George, 150. 

Royal Mares, 58, 68, 82, 64, 410. 

Ruins, Prehistoric American, 199. 

Running Blood in the Trotter, 481-496, 511. 

Running Gait, The. 154-15(). 

Russell, Capt. John W., 430-431. 

Russell, Col. H. S., 357. 

Russell, Mr., 350. 

Russian Pacers, 392, 393, 394. 

Rvlander, Mr., 238. 

Rynders, Capt. Isaiah, 311, 414. 

Rysdyk, Wm. M., 272, 278, 281, 302, 309, 398, 399 



Sabaeans, 42. 

Saddle Gaits, 192, 193, 194. 

Saddle Horse, American and English, 119. 

Saddle Horse, Ancestry of the, 191. 

Saddle Horse, English, 192, 193. 

.Saddle Horse Register, 194. 

Saddle Horse, The American, 190-195. 

Saddle Stock, Foundation, 194, 195. 

Sager Horse (Young Sportsman), 149. 

St. Bel, 293. 

St. Hillaire, Geoffrey, 472. 

St. Julien, 302. 

St. Lawrence (Old), 151. 

.St. Marks, Venice, Bronze Horses of, 158. 

St. Victor's Barb, 410. 

S.iladin, 321. 

Sale of Wallace Publications, 536-545. 

S ilisbury, Monroe, 501. 

Sally Anderson, 297. 

Sally Miller, 325, 327, 328. 

,Sally Russell, Pedigree of, 420-431, 458. 

Sally Slouch, 338. 

Saltram, 451. 

Sam Haziiard, 152. 

Sam Purdy, 335, 337. 

Sampson, 19, 209, 211, 212. 

Sanclers, James H., 529, 530, 531. 

Sanders' Trotting Stud Book. (See Breeders' 

Trotting Stud Book.) 
S inta Claus, 310. 
Saracenic Horse. (See Arabs, Turks, Barbs, 

etc.) 
Saracens, 50. 

Saracens Overthrow Visigoths, 46. 
Saracens in Spain, 473. 
Saratoga, 250. 
Sarpedon, 437. 
Satterwhite. Mr., 441. 
Saunders, H. C, 359. 
Scandinavian Horse, 473. 
Scaulon, James, 333. 
Scape Goat, 147, 149. 
Scobey, Backus & Burlew, 345. 
Scobey, C.,345. 
Scobey's Black Prince, 346. 
Scobey's Champion. (See Champion.) 
Scotland, 482. 
Scott, Samuel, 365. 
Scott's Hiatoga. (See Hiatoga.) 
Scott's Shales. (See Shales.) 
Screwdriver, 243. 
Seagull, 422, 426. 
Sears, Richard, 307. 
Sedan, Mr., 353. 
Sc-dley Arabian, 70. 
Seely Abdallah, 283. 
Seely, Daniel, 241. 
Seely, Uavid R., 371. 
Seely, Jonas, Jr., 267, 279, 283,283. 
Seely, Jonas, Sr., 278, 379. 280. 
Seely, Ebenezer, 280, 283. 
Seely, Edmund, 279, 338, 340. 
Seely, Peter, 279, 399. 



Seely's American Star. (See American Star.) 

Selaby (or Marshall Turk), 69. 

Seneca Patchen, 336. 

Sentinel, 275, 301 . 

Serls, Wilson, 147,, 148. 

Services of Amei-ican Star, 340. 

Services of Hambletonian, 272. 

Services of Messenger, 229-230. 

Seward, W. H., 64. 

Shaftsbury, 253. 

Shales, 401, 402. 

Shanghai Mary, 289, 355, 356, 413. 

Shark. 303. 

Shawhan, John, 358. 

Shawhan's Tom Hal, 358. 

Shawmut, 301. 

Sheldon V., 146-248. 

Shepherd, Colonel, 422. 

Shepherd, John. 355, 357. 

Shepherd Kings, 36, 37, 39. 

Sherman, B. B., 265. 

Sherman Morgan, 175, 376. 

Sherrill, Louis, 360. 

Shipman, George, 413, 414. 

" Ships of Tarshish." (See Tarshish.) 

Shiruo, William, 364. 

Shropshire, Benjamin N., 358. 

Shropshire, Mr., Jr., 359. 

Sickles, H. T., 333, 334. 

Sidou, 35. 

Silvei-tail, 21, 235, 267, 279, 281. 

Simmons, 288. 

Simmons, Wililam L., 286, 287, 453. 

Simmons, Z. E., 285. 

Simpson, Joseph Cairn, 218, 219, 221, 444, 486, 

487, 511. 
Singerly, Benjamin, 554. 
Sir Archv, 2S3. 326, 451, 488. 
Sir Charies, 343, 417. 
Sir Henry, 339, 363. 
Sir Peter, 397. 
Sir Solomon, 246, 251. 
Sir Wallace, 272. 
Sir Walter (by Hickory), 312, 313. 
Sir William, 318. 
Size of Horses, 11, 12, 13, 14, 111, 113, 114, 115, 

129, 130, 131, 136, 137, 140, 168, 172, 173, 179, 

182. 
Skenandoah, 362. 
Skinnei-, John S., 73, 97, 98, 447. 
Skinner's Turf Register, etc., 73, 76, 97, 101, 

224, 548. 
Slasher, 253. 
Slocum. Jolin N., 350. 
Smetanka, .391, 392, 395, 396. 
Smith, Capt. John W., Pioneer, 142. 
Smith, F. G., 557. 

Smith, H. N., 308, 501, 502, .503, 504, 505. 
Smith, J. F. D., Colonial Writer, 114. 
Smith, Thomas T., 345. 
Smith, William B., 43.3. 
Smuggler, 308, 357, 358. 
Snap Dragon, 447. 
Snediker, Isaac, 256. 
Sniffen, John, 344. 
Solomon, King, 35, 40, 41, 55. 
Somers, George, Early Pioneer, 109. 
Sons of Alexander's Abdallah (table), 297. 
Sons of Alniont (table), 299. 
Sons of Belmont (table), 300. 
Sons of Electioneer (table), 293. 
Sons of George Wilkes (table), 288. 
Sons of Hambletonian (table), 275. 
Sons and Grandsons of Hambletonian, 284-314. 
Sons of Messenger, 232 
Sophonisba, 259. 
Sorrel Dapper, 346. 

Sorrel Tom (Shawhan's Tom Hal), 358. 
South Carolina, Colonial Horse History, 140, 

141. 



INDEX. 



573 



Sovereig-n (Imported), 432. 

Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, 42. 

Spain, Early Horses, 45, 46, 47. 

Spanish Horses, 81, 173, 174, 175, 202, 203, 204, 

376, 472, 473. 
Spanish Jennets, 160, 161, 174, 175. 
Spauliling, Dr., 333. 
Speed of Hambletonian, 271. 
Speed, John, .379. 

Speed of Narragansett Pacers, 176. 
Sphinx, 293. 
Spirit, 344. 

Spirit of the Times, 548, 551, 557. 
Spirit of the Times (Old), 98, 101. 
Spirit of the Times (Porter's), 98. 
Spirit of the Times (Wilkes'), 98, 99, 530. 
Sprague & Akers, 313. 
Sprague, Hon. Amasa, 313. 
Sprague (Rounds'), 313. 
Squire Talmage, 275. 
SUmboul, 297. 3.32. 
Stamboul Arabian, 418. 
Stamina, Trotter and Runner, 483, 489, 490. 
Standard, First Suggestion of the, 519. 
Standard, Origin and History, 518-524. 
Standard, The, 542, 544, 545, 552. 553, 554. 
Standard, The Kentucky. (See Kentucky 

Standard.) 
Standard, The "Pinafore." (See Kentucky 

Standard.) 
Stanford, Leland, 291, 463, 464, 492, 493, 501. 
Stanford University, 293. 
Stanley, Colonel, 238. 
Star of Catskill, 341. 
State of Maine, 151. 

Statue of Washington, Union Square, 331. 
Staying Qualities in Trotter and Runner, 482, 

"489, 490. 
Stearns, Mr., 346. 
Steele, Andrew, 351. 
Steele, Solomon, 368, 373. 
Steiner, J. H., 542. 
Steel, Robert, 307. 
Steinway, 310. 

Stephanides, William (Fitz Stephen), 158. 
Stevens, Robert L.,334. 
Stevens, John Austin, 123. 
Stewart, Robert, 348. 
"S. T. H.,"555. 
Stockholder Mare, 423. 
Stone, Elijah, 352, 353. 
Stoner, Col. R. G., 309, 501, 505. 
Stouer, Martin, 349. 
Stonvford Stud, 413. 
Stout, Mrs. S. L., 501. 
Strabo, Greek Historian, 2, 37, 31, 33, 39, 41, 42, 

43, 95. 
Strader, R. S., 333. 
Strathiiiore, History of, 275, 309, 313. 
Stry pe, John, 1.58. 
Stricleaway, 355, 356. 
StringfieUl. John K., 428. 
"Structural Incongruity," 495. 
Strumpet, 125. 

Stubbs, English Artist, 73, 77, 78. 
Stud Book, Breeders' Trotting. (See Breeders' 

Trotting Stud Book.) 
Stud Book, Edgar's, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104. 
Stud Book, English. (See English Stud Book.) 
Stud Book, Sanders'. (See Breeders' Trotting 

Stud Book.) 
Stud Book, Wallace's, 101-104. 
Stump (Adams'), 359. 
Subscription Purses, Early, 90. 
Sultan, 297, 3:^2. 
Sutton, Lewis J., 294. 
Sun, The, 557. 

Sunol, Pedigree of, 290, 292, .294, 438-446, 499. 
Surrey, 327, 328. 
Swedish Horses, 165, 172, 473. 



Swedish Horses of Pennsylvania, 137. 

Sweepstakes, 275, 312. 

Swigert, 350. 

Swigert, Daniel, 351. 

Swigert, Philip, 440, 443, 444, 446. 

Swiss Boy, 422. 

Sykes, Mr., 362. 



Tables— Founders of Great Trotting j*'amilies, 
274. 

Tables— Sons of Alexander's Abdallah, 297. 

Tables — Sons of Almont, 299. 

Tables— Sons of Belmont, 300. 

Tables— Sons of Electioneer, 293. 

Tables— Sons of Hambletonian, 375. 

Tacony, 145, 149. 

Tappan, George, 261. 

Tarshish, Ships of, 4, 33, 44, 49. 

Tattersall, Mr., 447. 

Tattler, 493, 502. 

Taylor, G., on Early New England Horses, 132. 

Taylor. Mr., 422. 

Taylor, Samuel, 345 

Tefft, Mr., 349. 

Ten Broeck, R., 437. 

Terry, Samuel Hough, 557. 

Texas, 195. 

" The American Roadster," 449. 

"The Blessing," Voyage of, 109. 

The Conqueror, 305. 

The King, 288. 

The IMoor, 297, 332. 

"The Perfect Horse," 449. 

Theopholis, 42. 

Thomas, Colonel, 369. 

Thomas Jefferson, 151. 433, 482. 

Thomson, Allen W., 378, 380, 433, 557. 

Thome, Edwin, 260, 302. 

Thorndale, 297. 

Thoroughbred Blood in the Trotter, 481-496,. 
511. 

Thoroughbreds, First in America, 95, 96. 

Thoroughbreds, First in New York. 125. 

Thoroughbred Foundations, 511, 513. 

Thoroughbred, The Term, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, 
488. 

Thoroughbred, WTiat Constitutes a, 483, 481, 
485. 

Thoulouse Barb, 69. 

Thurston, Benjamin, 377. 

Thutmosis I., 29, 36. 

Timoleon, 4.50, 451, 488. 

"Tin-cup" Records, 506. 

Tippoo (by Messenger), 399. 

Tippo, Canadian Progenitor, 145, 146, 147. 

Tippo Saib, 246, 276, .327. 

Tippo SultAn, 233, 234, 246. 

Titcomb & Waldron, a50. 

"Titmouse Stud Book." (See Breeders' Trot- 
ting Stud Book.) 

Togarmah, 28. 29, 32. 33. 

Togarmah, Land of, 49. 

Tom Bowling, 451, 452. 

Tom Hal, 152. 195, 433. 

Tom Hal Family. 358-360. 

Tom Hal (Gray's), 359. 

Tom Hal Jr. (Gibson s). 359, 360. 

Tom Hal (Kittrell'si. 3.59. 

Tom Hal (Lail's). 358, 359. 

Tom Hal (Shawhan's), 358. 

Tom Hal (Shropshire's), 359. 

Tom Patchen, 336. 

Tom Rolfe, 355. 356, 357. 

Tom Teemer, 419. 

Tom Thumb, 281. 

"Tom Titmouse Stud Book." (See Breeders'" 
Trotting Stud Book.) 

Tom Titmouse, Pacer," 531, 533. 

Tone, Richard, 333. 



574 



INDEX. 



Tone, Thomas, 333. 

Topgallant, 237, 451. 

Torgom, 28. 

Toronto Chief, 151, 433. 

Tracy, Gen. B. F., 553, 557. 

Training of Hambletonian, 271. 

Trajan, Emperor, 43. 

Transfer of Wallace Publications, 536-545. 

"Travels Through the States," 118. 

Traveler (Imported), 95. 

Traveler (Lloyd's), 371. 

Traveler (Morton's). 371. 

Traveler. (See Beautiful Bay.) 

Tredwell, Alfred M., 303, 

Tredwell, John, 255, 256. 

TredweU Mare, 250, 251. 

Trot and Pace, Varieties of One Gait, 155, 156, 

184, 185, 186. 
Trotter in Relation to Pacer, 172-189, 498, 499. 
Trotters in England, 89. 
Trotters in 2:15 List, Breeders of, 501. 
Trotting Gait, Mechanism of, 154-156, 184, 185, 

186. 
Trotting Horse, How He is Bred, 456. 
Trotting Instinct, 23. 
Trotting Races, Early, 138. 
Trotting Races, Fii'st in America, 456, 457. 
Trotting Register, 508, 518, 520, 522, 529, 531. 
Trotting Register Association, The American, 

536-545. 
Trotting Register, Enemies Made by, 511, 512, 

534, 535, 543, 544, .545, 559. 
Trotting Register, Ti'ansfer of, 536-545. 
Trouble, 284. 

Troye, Animal Painter, 65. 
True Briton. (See Beautiful Bay 
True John, 264. 
Truffle (Imported), 419. 
Trustee (Imported), 334, 452, 481. 
Tucker, Joseph, 262, 263. 
Tulip Hill (Estate), 74. 
Turf Mare. (See Messenger.) 
Turf Papers, Timidity of, 510. 
Turf Papers Too Numerous, 510. 
Turf Register, Pick's, 83, 84. 
Turk, 411. 

Turk (Bartlett's), 346. 
Turk (Weddel's), 316. 
Turks, 81, 83, 85, 168, 391. 
Turks (English Foundation Stock), 68-72. 
Tuscarawas Chief. (See Scott's Hiatoga.) 
Tuthill, A. T., 347. 
Tweed, James Davis, 365. 
Tweedie, General, 43. 
Twenty-Mile Trotters, 482. 
Twombly, Shade, 377. 
Twombly, Wingate, 380. 
Tyre, 4, 35. 



Udell, Colonel, 250. 
Underhill, Judge, 265. 
Underbill, R. C, 302. 
Updike, Mr., Writer, 177. 
Upton, Major, 26, 54. 
Useful Cub, 401, 402. 
Utica, Algeria, 44. 
Utter Horse, 311. 
Uz, Land of, 40. 



Vail, Thomas J., 433, 434. 
Valentine, Native English Runner, 80. 
Van Buren, President, 64. 
Van Cortland, A., 332. 
Van Cott, W. H., 345. 
Vanderbilt, Commodore, 279. 
Van der Donck's Description of New Nether- 
lands, 121. 
Van Kirk, John S., 347. 



Van Raust, C. W., 234, 229, 346. 

Vanvliet, Daniel, 437. 

Van Wyck,Z. B.,330. 

Vatican, 300. 

Veech, R. S., 303, 310, 318, 419, 420, 4&4, 501, 536, 

527. ' . I . 

Velocity, 397. 

Vergenues Black Hawk, 313. 
Vermont, 264. 

Vermont Black Hawk. (See Black Hawk.) 
Vernon Arabian, 70. 
Viatka Horses (Russian), 393, 394. 
Victor Bismarck, 275. 
Virginia, 8, 9, 10, 11. 
Virginia, Beverley's Histoiy of. 111. 
Virginia, Colonial Horse History, 108-119. 
Virginia, First Importations to, 109, 110, 116, 

117. 
Virginia, First Racing in, 91. 
Virginia, First Settlement of, 108. 
Virginia and Rhode Island Pacing Races, 177, 

178. 
Virgo, 311. 

Visigoths and Saracens, 46. 
"Vision," 557. 
Vixen, 68. 

Volcaii. (SeePolkan.) 
Voltaii-e, 493. 

Volunteer. History of, 275, 301, 313. 
Von Mittendorf, Professor, 393. 

Wads worth, General, 328, 453. 

Wagner, 432. 

Walk, Mechanism of the, 154-156. 

Walker Horse, 437. 

Walker, J. H.,310. 

Wallace, Gen. Lew., 66. 

Wallace, John H., 528, 547-559. 

Wallace Publications, History of, 547-559. 

Wallace Publications, Transfer of, 536-545. 

Wallace's American Stud Book, History of, 

548, 549. 
Wallace's American Trotting Register, History 

of 550-554 
Wallace's Monthly, 74, 111, 133, 169, 218, 233, 

256, 375, 394, 295, 356, 415, 433, 428, 453, 483, 

519-525 227-531 
Wallace's Mo"ntlily', History of, 554-557. 
Wallace's Year-Book, History of, 557-559. 
Walpole, Sir Robert, 76. 
Wapsie, 252. 
Ward, Mr., 368, 371, 375. 
Warlock, 300. 

Warrior (Black Warrior), 149, 150. 
Washington, 322. 

Washington Statue, Union Square, 331. 
Waterloo, 300. 
Waterwitch, 514. 
Watkins, Julius, 361. 
Watson, John F., 126, 179, 180. 
Watt, Joseph, 365. 
Waxana, Pedigree of, 4.38-446. 
Waxy (.grandam of Sunol), 438-446. 
Weatherby, Mr., Compiler of English Stud 

Book, 71, as, 84, 87, 88, 106, 210, 212, 213, 214, 

215, 316, 317. 
Weaver, John, 324. 
Webster (by Medoc), 319. 
Wedgewood, 300. 
Weights, First Use of, 157, 473. 
Weisiger, Mr., 436. 
Weismann, Professor, 471. 
Welch, Ai-istides, 309. 

Welch, John P., 438, 439, 440, 443, 444, 445, 446. 
Welch, Samuel, 361. 
Wesley Grey, 70. 

West, Col. R., 297, 304, 310, 311, 358, 526, 527. 
Western Asia, 30, 32. 



INDEX. 



575 



Western Girl. 502. 

Whelan, William, 320, 437, 481. 

Whip (Cannon's), 419. 

Whip (Uiiniining"s;, 359. 

Whisky Jane, a%, 337. 

Whitehall, 309, 313. 

Whitney, Frank, Artist, .556. 

Whynot, 333, 410. 

Whynot Messenger, 249. 

Whyte, Mr., English Author, 159. 

Wickham, Mr., 450,451. 

Widow Machree, 311, 414, 

Wilcox, Isaiah. 26G. 

Wilcox Mare, 266, 306. 

Wilcox, Mr., 149. 

Wildair, 451. 

Wildair Mare, 450. 

Wild Deer, 149. 

Wild Horses of America, 196-204, 

Wild Horses of Arabia, 26. 

Wild Wagoner, 336. 

Wiley, John, 365. 

Wilkes Boy, 288. 

Wilkie Collins, 388. 

Wilkes (Mr.), (ieorge, 99. 

Wilkes' Spirit of the Times, 99, 

Wilkins, Richard, 249. 

William (Imported), 432. 

William Hunter Mare, 357. 

Williams, C. W., 501. 

Williams, G. T., 315. 

Williams, John, 4:W, 4.35, 436. 

AVilliams, John, Jr., 348. 

Williams, Mr. (Owner of Godolphin Arabian), 

Williams, Roger. 13, 133. 

Williams' Turk, Sir J., 69. 

Williams, Warren. 315. 

Wilson, James, 352. 

Wilson, Sir R., 31. 

Wilson. William H., 491, 501,505. 

Wilson's Blue Bull. (See Blue Bull.) 

Wilton, 288. 

Winthrop, 364. 

Winthrop :Messenger; 20, 363, 481. 

V inthrop Messenger, History of, 237-241. 

Wiser, Hon. J. P., 147. 

Withers, Gen. William T., 297, 304, 807, 312, 833, 



Woodburn Farm, 300, 350, 415, 416, 420-431, 

516-532. 
Wood, W. H., 271. 
Woodford. 319. 

W^oodford Mambrino, 318, 319. 
Woodford Wilkes, 288. 
Woodmansee, L. D., 355, 357 
Woodnut, H. C 304. 
Woodpecker, 437. 
Woodruff, George, .324, 325. 
Woodruff, Hiram, 326, 346, 481. 
Woodward, S. B., .382, 383. 
Woodward, William, 443, 444. 
Wooton, EngUsh Artist, 76, 77, 
Worden. Mr., 437. 
Wyllis, Colonel, 94. 



" Yah Amerikanski," 555. 

Yates, L. E., 864. 

Year-Book, Transfer of, 586-545. 

Yemen, 2. 28. 55. 

Yemen (see also Arabia), 40, 42, 43, 

Youatt on the Pace, 170, 171. 

Young Andrew Jackson, 327. 

Young Bashaw. .321, 322, 327, 336. 

Young Bay Kentucky Hunter, 868. 

Young Bulrock, 375. 

Young Commander, 243, 857, 

Young Conqueror, 360. 

Young, Daniel, 245. 

Young Eclipse (Sherman's), 847. 

Young Engineer, 357. 

Young, George A., 283. 

Young Jim, 288. 

Young Morrill, 357. 

Young One Eye, 278, 879. 

Young Patriot, 301 . 

Young Pocahontas (2:26%), 355. 856u 

Young Portia. 493. 

Young Rolfe, 357. 

Young Selim, 353. 

Young Sportsman (Sager Horse), 149. 

Young WUkes, 288. 



Zachary Taylor, 841. 



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